[bayindirh]

So, it's fine as long as it's legal, then?

How about when it enters the food chain and starts to accumulate? Will the elements say that "we're under legal limits, and accumulate slowly, so we will act nice and don't poison the organism we're in?"

Love that way of thinking.

[AlotOfReading]

Emissions regulations are a balancing act. Industrial processes are inherently filthy. If you want copper, gold, lithium, or anything else that makes up the modern world, somewhere on earth was dirtied for that to be possible, and some of the pollution will get into the surroundings because zero emissions simply isn't possible. So we set certain levels of "acceptable emissions" as a balancing act.

I also agree that emissions should be tighter, but the location question is more interesting, because we can also choose where emissions happen.

For example, we might choose them to happen near cities/factories so the products are close to where they're used. We've mostly stopped doing that since the industrial revolution for pretty good reasons though. We could place them in the pristine landscapes not otherwise used by humans, like national parks. That's unpopular for hopefully obvious reasons. We could place them in sparsely inhabited deserts abroad, as Europeans did [0], before we collectively decided colonialism was a bad thing.

And lastly, we could place them in figurative deserts away from conservation land and people like monoculture farmland, but then we get to your question.

So, what's left? What are you suggesting as a better alternative?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bou_Craa

[xiaoyu2006]

> we're under legal limits

That's the definition of law. As long as it is legal it won't be charged.

[bayindirh]

What if the law is formulated to be convenient for corporations and not to protect the public and/or the environment?

[gdudeman]

Then we should work together as a society to fix the law and make sure it's applied evenly. Hard to do, but necessary.

Is there an alternative?

[unglaublich]

Then we should protest the law.

[lmm]

In some vague abstract sense? Wouldn't protesting specific instances where bad laws are letting companies get away with environmentally damaging practices be more effective? As and when there's a pattern of events that is best addressed by adjusting the law, politicians and voters can figure that out for themselves.

[cyberax]

Arsenic and lead occur naturally through the food chain. If the levels of discharge are not significantly above the normal levels (and they aren't) then it's harmless.

[bluGill]

They are still not harmless. They are normal. However if they are at all above natural (that is your input levels) you should treat and remove them. It is not unusual for the output of a sewage treatment plant to be cleaner water than what goes into your drinking water system.

[cyberax]

From a quick lookaround, it looks like a lot of water sources in the area have similar natural levels of arsenic. I could not find chromium content information, and it's plausible that it can be leached from stainless steel.

These are pretty much the only two concerning contaminants. Everything else in the report is just fear-mongering, like the BS about manganese.

[gegtik]

its all-natural

[dvt]

> So, it's fine as long as it's legal, then?

> Love that way of thinking.

I mean.. yeah, kinda'? We live in a society made up of laws, that's kind of the premise. So if we don't think something is fine, we can make it illegal (and we often do).

It's a pretty good way of thinking methinks, what's your alternative?

[krsw]

It kind of falls apart when large companies can lobby and bribe the people in charge of writing and enacting laws to make exception and write around their problem areas. Or can just make strategic donations to ease any risks of enforcement. Or collude to make sure the fine for whatever infraction is well below the profit margin of doing said infraction.

I don't care to argue semantics, just pointing out your reply was as hollow as your criticism to the person saying legal doesn't mean safe. It's a pretty reasonable thing to draw attention to methinks...

[grogg]

The issue lies in how the laws are decided and by whom.

[xg15]

It's also a complete fiction in a world dominated by commercial interests, entrenched lobby groups, corrupt politicians and regulatory capture.

[gdudeman]

Is there an alternative?

We live in a much, much cleaner world than we did 50 years ago. Legislation and environmental rules have worked. There are some areas where it could obviously be better, but also some areas where regulation is too strict (blocking housing, renewables, transit) and the system is evolving to address those.

I think the loss of local media has made it harder for misdeeds to come to light, but I don't want to throw up my hands and cede everything to commercial interests et al.

[xg15]

I think a look at other countries would do well. There are many with much tighter regulations (e.g. EU countries, Singapore, Japan) and they seem to have good results with that.

> We live in a much, much cleaner world than we did 50 years ago. Legislation and environmental rules have worked.

I think prevention of pollution is one area where very tight regulation is absolutely needed, and this seems to be an argument for that.

Of course regulation can be weaponized and used as a tool to serve entrenched interests as well - but this is then more a problem with the overall political system. Also, I think a proof that this is the case is necessary instead of assuming it by default.

[fuzzy2]

Dunno, maybe strive to release no pollutants at all? Then we wouldn't need all the pesky big government overreach.

[jakelsaunders94]

Taking this as a good faith engineering argument. What does that mean? What do you constitute a pollutant and how much is zero?

I guess as a contrived example your breath releases 40k PPM Co2. Have you tried aiming for no pollution?

The reality is we make things which involve pollutants, which we create laws to govern the safe disposal of. Engineers optimise for these constraints the same way you do. You wouldn’t have one k8s pod per request to ‘strive to keep the response times as low as possible’.

[Symmetry]

In all of human history nobody has ever had a glass of water with literally no arsenic in it, there are trace amounts in every lake, river, and well. Even the ultra-purified water used in bleeding edge semiconductor fabrication has a lot more than 1 atom of arsenic per glass. In the far future humanity might obtain the technology to create water with literally no pollutants in it but that age has yet to arrive.

[forshaper]

How would you do that, assuming you wanted to keep up the material standard of living that the people you care about are used to?

[testing22321]

I assume you hold yourself to that same standard?

Your car, heating, toilet and soap and all the rest release zero pollution, right?

[goosejuice]

Um, I'm pretty sure we can all get behind corps striving for the ideal. Fines align incentives.

Are you actually suggesting that we rely on the good will of a for profit corp? When has that ever worked?

[fuzzy2]

GP suggests that it's fine if it's not forbidden yet. My (sarcastic) suggestion is that it is not, because corporations never act in good faith.

[baggy_trough]

To exist is to pollute.

[xg15]

This seems to be the credo of too much of the tech industry lately.

[bayindirh]

But you can pollute sustainably. e.g.: Composting, biodegradable materials, etc.

or unsustainably: e.g.: PFAS. For bonus points you can do internal research and hide the reports detailing the effects accurately.

[alterom]

>I mean.. yeah, kinda'? We live in a society made up of laws, that's kind of the premise.

It might be news to you, but the laws don't dictate what's fine, and what isn't.

Aside from things like slavery being legal and homosexuality being illegal in the past, I'll note that it's perfectly legal for you to drink bleach, but it wouldn't really be fine for you to do that.

(I hope we can agree that advising people to do something "fine" isn't rude, but telling someone to go drink bleach would be) .

> So if we don't think something is fine, we can make it illegal (and we often do).

So, to boot, "it's fine as long as it's legal" doesn't apply to those things, youthinks.

Also, "we" is a peculiar pronoun that needs a lot of expansion, considering that the "we" negatively affected by "not fine" things isn't the same "we" that benefits from them, and it's the latter "we" that has direct influence on legislation.

Some interesting terms to read up on include "negative externality" and "corruption" (assuming youreads).

>It's a pretty good way of thinking methinks, what's your alternative?

If we turn to historical examples, the French Revolution certainly provides an example for alternative ways to resolve disparities between what's legal and what's fine.

There are plenty of others, but that question wasn't asked in good faith, methinks, and so doesn't deserve a more in-depth answer.

[whimsicalism]

What a ridiculous comment for something that is obviously extremely +EV for the environment.

[tekne]

I mean... if it's got a similar amount of toxin X to drinking water... then it's probably not making things much worse.

There is lead in dirt!

[Etheryte]

The upper limit does not mean that water actually has that amount in it regularly.

[stinkbeetle]

Wonderful to see so many people here embracing skepticism when it comes to government institutions, bureaucrats, and their "experts".