[cykotic]

This is how progress is made. It starts out with observations and looking for clues and links. What the study shows is that these chemicals have decidedly not shown to be safe and therefore ought not be used. Further study is warranted and if the number of correlations increase substantially then we will have learned something new. If no new correlations are found then we have learned something new in this case too.

[modeless]

> This is how progress is made.

Yes.

> Further study is warranted

Yes.

> What the study shows is that these chemicals have decidedly not shown to be safe and therefore ought not be used.

Absolutely not. And the fact that people think that kind of thing after reading sensationalized articles like this causes real problems.

[bjourne]

What you are objecting to is the precautionary principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle. It is used by many if not most agencies dealing with foodstuff, environmental protection, drugs, workplace hazards, etc.

[RandomLensman]

I think that is a fair position to take.

[pessimizer]

"Not shown to be safe" is about the weakest claim that you could make.

> Absolutely not. And the fact that people think that kind of thing after reading sensationalized articles like this causes real problems.

Are you trying to say that this study did show these chemicals to be safe, or were they not shown to be safe? Believing the first would be a real problem.

[saghm]

I suspect the confusion is over the difference between "not shown to be safe" and "shown not to be safe". The former is saying that "we haven't yet determined for sure that they're safe", and the latter states "we've concluded for sure that they are not safe". It's unfortunately super easy to misread one for the other despite their very different meanings; I had to re-read the original sentence twice before being sure that I read it correctly.

[anonuser123456]

The study is underpowered. But I sure as shit wouldn't be bathing in this stuff given the results.

[jncfhnb]

I bet your bathing products aren’t far off

[eggy]

Funny you should say that, because I managed a water show in Macau. The 17 million liter, 10m deep pool had hydraulically actuated lifts in it, and we went from normal hydraulic fluid to vegetable oil for leak and contamination issues. The vegetable oil hydraulic fluid had issues, so we switched to a PEG-based fluid. Toxicity reports were great. I had over 400 technical dives in the pool servicing equipment. When we switched over, the performers were concerned about the PEG-based fluid. Some claimed they had a rash after a small leak (5 gallons in a 5m gallon pool). Others joined in on the fear and I had to address the technicalities to a mostly lay audience. I asked them to check their body moisturizers and hair conditioners they all used before and after each show. One of the top half of the ingredients were PEGs. I am not saying someone couldn't have a sensitivity to PEGs, but in this case it seemed like fear over rationality when they were putting more ppm of PEG on their bodies via their care products than they could have been exposed to in the pool.

[Fomite]

This is a very confusing statement to be, statistically. Statistical power is the ability to detect an effect, given an effect is there.

This study detects an effect - and indeed, does so with statistical significance.

By definition, that seems like it can't be underpowered.

[Fomite]

^"...a very confusing statement to me" as it were.

[cykotic]

I think they should be banned because it makes no sense to me to extensively use chemicals that have not been shown to have a reasonable chance of being safe. Why extensively use something about which we know very little what the environmental effects are?

My stance has nothing to do with the study.

[jstanley]

You would halt almost all progress with this attitude. You would freeze civilisation in the state it is today.

If people of the past were as risk-averse as this we would still be living in caves.

[cykotic]

No. What you wrote is completely wrong. Besides, it would be better for the environment and humanity if we did not progress so fast in the area of releasing massive amounts of toxic chemicals and detritus.

[Robotbeat]

That applies to literally everything.

[esafak]

Yes? Objectors are free to be guinea pigs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

[judge2020]

This already happens in high-risk areas with the likes of the FDA requiring approval for drugs, since they are more likely to be immediately and/or grossly harmful as a direct result. We don't have evidence that many of these chemicals or even microplastics are directly responsible for any long-term physiological effects (but we know for certain that they exist and are being ingested and distributed throughout the body), so it's not like people are dropping dead from (mis)use of forever chemicals.

[goodpoint]

Huh? There are tons of evidence that PFAS and microplastics are toxic.

[ethbr1]

> Why extensively use something about which we know very little what the environmental effects are?

Because burning jet fuel in an enclosed interior ship space while hundreds of miles from land is a bigger and more immediate threat?

It makes sense to phase out dangerous chemicals wherever we can, but sometimes their use is a chemical imperative because there are no equivalent alternatives.

The X-37 reportedly uses hypergolic nitrogen-tetroxide + hydrazine fuel, which means everyone wears spacesuits around it on the ground. But it solves an engineering challenge that more mundane fuel mixes don't. Ergo, they use something toxic and dangerous.