[cryoshon]

We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate.

We know which companies are responsible for polluting. They've been doing it for years, knowing the damages in greater and greater detail all along the way.

Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem? And why aren't these chemicals banned? At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this? We don't get much of anything in the way of protection from bad domestic actors (in this case, polluters) for our tax dollars.

It's getting quite tiring to live in a country where the rules seem to be "anarchy for thee, and profits for me".

[duped]

> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem

We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations.

> At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this?

When they stop being corrupt.

(1) https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/public-safety/3m-con...

[tivert]

>> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem

> We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations.

Criminal liability for decision-makers is the way to go, along with some plan that wipes out the shareholders but otherwise doesn't destroy or cripple the company as a going concern. The company itself isn't guilty, and it has lots of innocent stakeholders (e.g. customers, lower-level employees) who would be harmed if it was damaged.

[aoeusnth1]

The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.

[andruby]

But that would also introduce a perverse incentive by giving the government a way to take over companies.

(And yes I do believe that governments and/or individuals with power would abuse this for personal gain)

[aoeusnth1]

They already have the ability to sue for cash. How is stock materially different?

[andruby]

Stock gives control over a company. I would say that is materially different.

ie: suing Apple for cash won't give them the ability to install backdoors, taking over control of Apple would. (This is probably unlikely to happen with Apple, but maybe it could with Comcast, AT&T or even Intel)

[nightski]

Yeah no thanks. The government is the reason these companies were able to do this in the first place. They lack the ability to simply regulate, let alone run a company.

[tivert]

>> The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.

> They lack the ability to simply regulate, let alone run a company.

Who says the government would run the company? The meat of the policy is all about wiping out existing shareholders to incentivize them to make sure the company doesn't do stuff like pollute a bunch of groundwater. The policy could (and should) immediately sell the company again via an IPO of reissued shares. The proceeds could go to some cleanup or compensation fund or something.

[nightski]

That's not what nationalize means, you kind of went off on a tangent. Regardless the wealthy would find a way around any scheme like this, I have no faith something like this could be done effectively. Like I said they can't even regulate because of lobbying and special interests (they need money to get elected).

My point primarily being that government is more the problem here than corporations. It's their job to put in safeguards to prevent these things from happening in the first place and they could do that without resorting to pseudo communism.

[aceazzameen]

But these companies are so big now that it would hurt someone's stock, 401k, and economy as a whole.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But these companies have to be hurting themselves in the market by other means before the govt will do anything about it, besides a slap on the wrist.

[tivert]

> But these companies are so big now that it would hurt someone's stock, 401k, and economy as a whole.

I'd think a "corporate death penalty" as a kind of creative destruction. I'm sure demise of Radio Shack hurt someone's stock stock or 401k, so that's tolerable. If it's not, I suppose part of the policy could be to reissue and return stock to certified "unsophisticated" investors (e.g. index funds open to the public and people with net worth below some middle-class cutoff). That reissued stock would still be valuable, since likely few of the company's fundamentals would have changed.

I also don't think such a thing would hurt the "economy as a whole" beyond a short-term blip, unless the company ceases to be a going concern. You'd only we wiping out the stockholders, it'd still service its customers, make debt payments, etc.

[mcpackieh]

Leaving the company intact is dangerous. The company culture that permitted these acts won't necessarily be wiped out when you purge the executives but leave the rest of management intact.

[tivert]

> Leaving the company intact is dangerous.

Not necessarily so.

> The company culture that permitted these acts won't necessarily be wiped out when you purge the executives but leave the rest of management intact.

So throw the baby out with the bathwater, then?

[nickff]

Wiping out shareholder equity will incentivize risk taking (think Bed Bath & Beyond or Hertz), and is very likely to destroy company, harming many stakeholders in the process.

[tivert]

> Wiping out shareholder equity will incentivize risk taking (think Bed Bath & Beyond or Hertz), and is very likely to destroy company, harming many stakeholders in the process.

Explain how you think punishing bad behavior will motivate more of it.

IMHO, the shareholder class puts out all kinds of noise to avoid accountability, and that includes employing people to produce very sophisticated propaganda that makes false claims against holding them accountable (e.g. false heads-I-win, tails-you-lose scenarios).

[duped]

Similarly we should let burglars off the hook because they're putting bread on their families' tables. My point being is that such a limp response is just more privatization of profits and socialization of losses/costs.

The systemic risk of not putting companies to death when they behave badly is greater than the risk of the less-guilty stakeholders (you can't be a stakeholder in a bad actor and be innocent - only less guilty; that's true of employees and customers).

[tivert]

> Similarly we should let burglars off the hook because they're putting bread on their families' tables. My point being is that such a limp response is just more privatization of profits and socialization of losses/costs.

Except we're not. Unlike a corporation, a burglar is a unitary entity. Everyone guilty in the company (including its shareholders) will be "on the hook."

> The systemic risk of not putting companies to death when they behave badly is greater than the risk of the less-guilty stakeholders (you can't be a stakeholder in a bad actor and be innocent - only less guilty; that's true of employees and customers).

No. That's an unreasonably extreme take that, if taken to heart, would cause the cons to far outweigh the pros. We live in the real world, and the real world demands tradeoffs.

Also extending this to all the costumers is nonsense. Is some dude who buys a 3M N95 mask in a hardware store even a little bit guilty of polluting the water supply with PFAS? No, of course not. You might be able to extend some blame to companies that bought PFAS from 3M, but it would have to a pretty direct connection.

[bushbaba]

Payment won’t dissuade. What will is getting a conviction of murder with life in jail for every single employee aware of the impacts and complicit. Yes that’s 1000s of lives ruined. But that single act will tell everyone else to fess up or risk similar punishment. Including the lower peons who’d be happy to cut a deal for amnesty.

[lizardking]

> When they stop being corrupt.

So never, probably.

[activiation]

> We need criminal liability for executives and board members.

Stock holders too

[brewdad]

I might even be willing to get on board with that if a reasonable threshold were in place. Every American with an S&P 500 fund of some sort owns some 3M stock. We’re not throwing the majority of American adults in prison anytime soon.

[activiation]

For-profit prisons respectfully disagree

[concordDance]

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate.

A statement with neither nuance (no distinguishing the types of chemicals) nor precision (no quantification), either false (because we do not actually know for certain that all of them cause noticeable quality of life decrease even at tapwater concentrations) or trivial and meaningless (e.g. enough of any substance will harm health).

Here's the article:

> High concentrations of some PFAS may lead to adverse health risks in people, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research is still ongoing to better understand the potential health effects of PFAS exposure over long periods of time.

Simply saying "There isn't a debate." doesn't make a statement true. It's certainly true that some of these chemicals have good evidence for harming human health at concentrations people could actually encounter them in. It's not true that we know this for all of them, nor what concentrations cause issues.

Your post reads like a call to action, rather than a curious and considered analysis. The propagation of these types of posts makes hackernews a worse place as more and more people use it to proselytise rather than explore, discuss and learn.

If you wished to actually contribute you could cite some form of meta study giving a breakdown of the health effects of the various chemicals at certain concentrations.

[AlanSE]

Not trying to be the troll, but this debate is missing the obvious retort.

> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup

Because then the manufacturing goes to China. It doesn't get cleaner, it might actually get worse. The pollution goes somewhere else. Economic anxiety (which is politically explosive, see 2016 election) goes up domestically.

What we need is effective regulation, not bureaucratic us-versus-them regulation. We need more engineering spending and less legal spending. And as a consequence, yes, we need fewer choices in consumer products and higher prices, and we need consumer safety laws that prevent offshoring from undermining all of that.

[bob-09]

> What we need is effective regulation, not bureaucratic us-versus-them regulation.

That's easy to say and everyone would agree we need "effective" regulation, but I think the profit-driven corporations that continue to pollute and use a portion of their profits to pay lobbyists and influence public discourse in order to discourage regulation will always take a "us-versus-them" approach.

[AlanSE]

It needs to be more expensive to hire lawyers (and lobbyists) than to hire engineers to solve the problem. Some companies will fail to adapt and continue to fight legally in lieu of adding filters and complying, and those companies should get shut down.

[mcpackieh]

Corporate lawyers need to be held accountable too. If an executive knows the company's product is dangerous but keeps that secret because he's representing the board/shareholders, nobody thinks he shouldn't be punished for keeping this secret. But if the corporate lawyer knows the product is dangerous and keeps this secret because he's representing the company, this is somehow okay? If lawyers could be held liable for what they knew and concealed, they'd either turn tail and run or would demand far more money to compensate for the risk. Either way, companies would be dissuaded from relying on lawyers instead of fixing their products.

Attorney-client privilege should be severely curtailed if not abolished outright when the client is a corporation.

[rngname22]

What are you talking about? You can ban the sale of products containing PFAS, not just their local manufacture.

If you wanted, you could levy fines like 5-10% of gross annual revenue for any company or marketplace or retailer found distributing product containing PFAS.

You don't have to agree it's feasible or worth it, but it's possible.

[logifail]

> You can ban the sale of products containing PFAS [...]

"Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals that have been used in consumer products around the world since about the 1950s. They are ingredients in various everyday products. For example, PFAS are used to keep food from sticking to packaging or cookware, make clothes and carpets resistant to stains, and create firefighting foam that is more effective."[0]

Should we ban those uses, outright? Q: What do you suggest we use instead?

[0] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/pfc/index.cfm

[matthewdgreen]

We should absolutely ban the use of PFAS in applications where it isn't strictly necessary, like the (relatively recent) explosion of fast-food containers that are marginally more waterproof and/or cheaper because of it. This isn't even an interesting question.

Use of PFAS in (airport) firefighting foam is a more complicated question, but that mostly illustrates that the question isn't well-formed.

[ipaddr]

Yes ban them. The cookware usage is unnecessary and hard to purchase without. Clothes get replaced so often that stains are not and issue worth dying over. Carpets usage is down. Firefighting foam that is more effective sounds good until the other choice is poisoning firefighters for slightly more effectiveness.

[logifail]

> The cookware usage is unnecessary and hard to purchase without

Q: If the first part of that statement is true then why is the second part of that statement true?

I would suggest that nonstick cookware is popular because consumers like it ... because "it works".

If there were an alternative that was as good then it would be readily available and frequently sold.

[duped]

There once was a miracle material that came from an abundant resource, was extremely cheap to manufacture in a variety of forms, was extremely light, and had incredible properties that made it perfect for both industrial and consumer uses. It had one small issue though, which was that it was hard to dispose of.

It was so good, for its purpose it was pretty much the only material you could buy to do its job for a long time.

That material is called asbestos. It turned out to be so hard to work with that it gave millions of people cancer, even though it's pretty much the perfect insulator when left alone.

---

Non-stick cookware is not nearly as bad as asbestos, but it's cheap and easy to use because it doesn't require maintenance like stainless steel, copper, or cast iron. It's not surprising that it's popular and the cheapest to make at scale since you don't need the surface of the material to be very good at all, if it's getting coated with teflon. There's the small problem that you've made a disposable product that probably won't get recycled and everyone who uses it will be eating small amounts of plastic everyday, but they'll thank you for the privilege.

[katbyte]

> alternative that was as good then it would be readily available

there is cast iron & carbon steel, its just harder to use needing more actual skill and requires more care where coated non stick panes just work.

however that coating will wear off and then you need a new pan, kill birds if overheated, where the stainless/carbon steel will last the rest of your life.

[Dah00n]

Because it is either more expensive or require retooling. Greed, profit, the same reasons as always.

[AlanSE]

Maybe get rid of them in clothes and personal care products at least?

[BartjeD]

This isn't a new problem.

The standard legal remedy is distributor liability, for importing unsafe products. This has been part of EU regulation for more than 30 years

[malfist]

Sorry, but this attitude is too defeatist to accomplish anything.

We can try something, even if it doesn't work, we can still try it. Ban those chemicals. If they want to move manufacturing to china to use illegal pollutants, let them. That's a huge cost to them and no guarantee china will let them keep doing it.

"It's not illegal in another country" isn't a reason for us to keep it legal. We can lead the way.

[logifail]

> Ban those chemicals. If they want to move manufacturing to china to use illegal pollutants, let them.

Apart from the minor issue that they won't be illegal in China, so production will continue.

As an aside, "Net Zero" isn't going to happen in China, either[0].

[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

[Dah00n]

No it won't without buyers. Importing is just as easy to make illegal, likely easier. EU does this for a lot of products and so does the US.

[logifail]

> No it won't without buyers

Q: Why would the rest of the world stop making/selling/buying these products just because the US/Canada/EU/UK were to ban them?

We only need to look at the regions that are expanding use of coal .. and even still mining and using asbestos!

[Dah00n]

It likely won't stop but the market is going to become much smaller for anyone doing business with those nations. The manufacturer would either have to change their process, go bankrupt, or at least see profits cut by a huge margin.

[thfuran]

>We can try something, even if it doesn't work, we can still try it.

At a national policy level, trying something that doesn't work can have terrible and long-lasting consequences.

[malfist]

Then lets not try anything. That's the alternative right?

If you see trying and failing is seen as a worse alternative to doing nothing and poisoning the environment we all live in then you need to take a step back, be less critical, and be okay with partial or incomplete solutions.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

[thfuran]

>Then lets not try anything. That's the alternative right

No, considered action is the alternative. If PFAS use is banned, what's the likely outcome? Would it be expected to significantly reduce the global PFAS emissions much or mostly move them somewhere that cares less and even increase other pollution that those places also care less about? Are there important uses of PFAS for which we have no viable alternative? What would losing those mean? Would it be expected that replacements used locally are actually better for the environment? What's the risk that they're actually worse? Would taxing PFAS use instead of banning it have similar outcome but be easier to roll back if needed? How much would it cost to implement a ban, including ongoing costs of ensuring compliance? Are there other environmental efforts that would have better expected ROI and/or less risk?

>Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Don't let "Won't somebody please think of the children!?" be the enemy of effective policy. Not acting has a cost and delay has a cost, but so does acting rashly.

[akaru]

Reminds me of something else that is terrible and long-lasting.

[TurningCanadian]

You could say the same thing about doing nothing. As evidence I submit the study referred to in the article.

[thfuran]

Yes, which is why it is important to try to do the right thing rather than just doing the first thing that comes to mind without regard for whether it's expected to work.

[mc32]

Also, what are viable alternatives? It seems like a game of whack a mole. Ban one chemical, use a new one, years later new one is worse.

We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease, etc. someone’s gotta make the calculus.

[logifail]

> We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease

Hint: it's actually about money, not sterility.

A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container, but the glass weighs more, and costs more, so if all other things are equal the retailer will of course opt for the supplier with the cheaper and lighter packaging.

[mcpackieh]

> A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container,

In fact glass is easier to sterilize; it isn't porous and holds up to high heat and chemical disinfectants like bleach. This makes it superior to plastic for food preservation.

[mrguyorama]

But that doesn't matter because everything nowadays is designed as "single use"

[mc32]

What do we do about frozen foods? (If not plastic, they have plastic linings or coatings). What about the butchers, are we back to newspaper with newspaper inks?

And wat do you do about food delivery, lunch service, fast-food, single serve, sauce packets, airport food, vending machines, etc...

[swifthesitation]

Interesting, I like the idea of pre-plastic. Some hypothetical "solutions" (i.e. brain farts) I'll toss out into the ether:

Ban all levels of plastic for the _packaging_ of food and goods.

Incentivize multiple-use and/or highly recyclable materials metal(aluminum), silicone and glass containers for food, rather than "convenience" and single-use.

Single-use plastics can be regulated and limited to medical/hospital use only.

This could also have a benefit of promoting smaller supply lines for things that spoil. Increasing small town economies, farms, mom & pop shops.

Plastics selling point is convenience and cost-reduction for consumers and businesses.

We could place regulation on the distillation ranges for the barrel oil.

As for the forever chemicals... We (U.S.) can approach the problem similar to the E.U. - Prove first, the safety of the chemical by outside labs (disallow testing by the company who benefits from the use of said chemical) before hitting the market. Whereas the current U.S. model is - I get to use whatever chemical I see fit, unless you prove to me wrong.

[AlanSE]

I have been, personally, figuring that I should wear mostly cotton clothing and glass / ceramic (as opposed to plastic) dishware. Limiting material choices for household items would be politically impossible, but I would like it to become a popularized "trend", which retailers will then cater to.

Companies should market based on using "traditional" non-toxic materials (still modern and industrial, just not absurd), and consumers can respond by giving their business.

[Spivak]

The answer is to have an allowlist but that's a political nonstarter.

If we cut plastic use to just medical devices and food storage that would be a massive win.

[lend000]

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate.

Is that really true? My understanding is that studies show that people with the highest levels of PFAS have increased risk of liver disease. Exactly how much PFAS exposure results in significant risk is still unclear, considering a decent chunk of people eat food from PFAS lined food wrappers, cook in PFAS coated cookware, rub their teeth with PFAS coated dental floss, drink PFAS contaminated water, and touch PFAS coated clothing and other surfaces on a daily basis and do not have any obvious resulting problems.

I'm not saying I disagree that there's a problem, and I personally try to reduce my exposure, but clearly the ratio of usefulness to toxicity is a lot better than with other substances, which have been more tightly controlled in recent history, such as lead and asbestos, and that's why the response has been less urgent. Even now, after decades of study, it isn't clear exactly what the effects are and how likely it is to affect people based on their daily habits.

[jwagenet]

> And why aren't these chemicals banned?

Not saying they shouldn’t be, but a problem is companies will just move on the the next, likely bad, similar chemical until it is also banned. I’ve seen suggestions to require chemicals to be proven not dangerous before widespread use, but this seems untenable. Perhaps the best solution is not to ban the chemicals themselves, but to obligate containment of waste, regardless of if it’s “bad”.

[smallerfish]

That's supposedly what the EU requires - https://chemicalsinourlife.echa.europa.eu/how-are-chemicals-...

I know they have issues with PFAS, but I'm unclear whether that's just because they were grandfathered in, or enforcement is lax, or both.

[autoexec]

It feels like a lot of things that are "impossible" in the US work just fine (and often far better) in other countries. I don't know if it's defeatism or a reluctance to change, but it's so strange to me that even when it comes down to something like "Companies shouldn't be able to poison you intentionally for profit" people in the US seem too scared to even try anything different.

[DoingIsLearning]

There are massive PFAS contamination areas in Belgium (Zwijndrecht) and Netherlands (Dordrecht) both caused by 3M both contaminating large rivers (Scheldt and Meuse) and water supplies.

Irrespective of the spirit of regulations this is very much a problem in Europe as well.

[autoexec]

It's in the rainwater everywhere on the planet. There's no escaping it no matter where you are. The US company poisoned the entire earth and everything living thing on it. Seems a bit unfair to say "HA HA Europe! How well are your sane and totally appropriate regulations working for you now! Still got poisoned!". Well, so did Antarctica and every other nation. That doesn't make it a bad idea to want products tested before they're allowed to do what 3M did.

[DoingIsLearning]

I am not disagreeing with the responsability of proving safety before making it into production much like what you have with medical devices.

My point was that despite stronger regulations the EU is not immune to environmental disasters and is now also struggling with 3M/Dupont PFAS water source contamination.

[losteric]

Why would a robust testing process prove to be untenable? We have a fairly high bar in medicine. For all it's flaws on the care and payment side, the medical research process seems robust without shortage of innovation.

[jwagenet]

In the US, it seems at the policy level this would be impossible to implement. From a practicality level, it would take very long to validate to the point of stifling innovation (good or bad) and would require international cooperation. Compared to medical research, medical interventions are risk based at the individual level and we are willing to accept marginal improvement with awful side effects. Chemicals apply risk at a societal level and settng by appropriate limits seems difficult vs mandating better waste containment.

[mc32]

After effects can take decades to detect.

[autoexec]

But often they don't and wouldn't it be nice to catch those at the very least?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate.

Of course there is a debate. How bad are they? Has anyone died from them? How do we how know much compensation people deserve? If they are so terrible then why has it taken so long to pin that down?

[sp332]

[Edit: sorry, I was confused here]

[multiplegeorges]

The wikipedia page has detailed discussion and many references for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...

[RandallBrown]

The wikipedia page definitely doesn't make it sound like there's no debate at all.

[cwkoss]

The companies don't have nearly enough assets to pay for clean up.

Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.

[nomel]

> Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup

A good portion of the companies behind superfund sites, in the US no longer exist, or are the US government.

At this point, subsidized reverse osmosis systems would probably be cheaper than cleaning up the mess.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

[autoexec]

> Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.

I'm guessing that if the American public saw the government actually hold a company and its shareholders accountable for knowingly poisoning their children it'd be massively popular politically. Lobbyists would have it.

[Brusco_RF]

Any genuinely terrible idea should be an uphill battle politically.

Do you know how much you, personally, benefit from modern material science? Do you think our nation could even operate with out Bayer, Dupont, 3M and the likes?

[e1g]

We are about to find out if we can do without 3M as they face eradication from a $140B cleanup litigation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-02/3m-heads-...

[autoexec]

We could always keep the company and fry the shareholders and executives responsible. If there ever were a company the nation couldn't do without, the only sane answer is for the government to take it over for national security reasons. Otherwise that company could hold the US hostage, or be bought out/taken over by foreign interests and used to collapse the entire country while we'd be powerless to stop it.

[Brusco_RF]

What you are describing is "expropriation." Cuba and Venezuela both did it. So if you want the US to look more like Venezuela, keep it up

[autoexec]

As if that was the one thing that put Venezuela in the position it is in now. Venezuela does a lot of things we already do in the US too, but somehow we aren't identical either. Maybe our situations are more complex than "this one weird trick will salvage/destroy your country"

[jlmorton]

We need something like Betteridge's Law of Headlines for the phrase "There isn't a debate."

Needless to say, when someone claims there is no debate, there is in fact a debate.