[abeppu]

To be clear, I'm not asking for anything. I'm raising a question, because I'm genuinely conflicted. It seems intractable to test everything for long enough to know that it's safe. On the other hand, the 20th century had some good examples of cases where we understood that something harmful only very long after it was in the environment (e.g. leaded gasoline).

Also to be clear, at no point did I say 100% about anything. Please do not attempt to put words in my mouth, or to fight a straw man. We can all acknowledge that empirical studies don't give 100% certainty about anything.

But it does also seem fundamentally problematic for us to make substances or materials ubiquitous in our environments faster than we can study them. We then also arrive at a methodological problem, where, for example we cannot meaningfully study whether long-term low-level exposure to PFAS are causing impacts on fertility in part because there is not a population that hasn't already had that exposure.

[ryandrake]

It doesn't seem like there's really a right answer. There is such a wide spectrum between "yolo everything into the market and find out later whether it is dangerous" and "don't do anything unless it's proven safe." I personally feel we can afford to throw innovation under the bus a little more than we do today, in exchange for more safety assurances, but reasonable people can disagree about it.