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Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them
(www.livescience.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Technology
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And now instead of stopping producing them, we will continue with the excuse 'we have the cure for the disease!'
Is there really no alternative in shampoo & disposable coffee cups?
I understand that these chemicals do have some outstanding properties but that doesn't mean unfettered production & use. Any risk assessment of a potential use really should include 100% resource recovery & disposal or recycling. This could have been done years ago but if industry can't self regulate then bans it is.
These chemicals make silent spring look like, um, er, weekend at Bernie's?
You're just shifting responsibility to the population that has no real control over the matter. That's completely unethical.
You want everyone to know all of the ethical concerns involved in every kind of product, from its contents to its manufacture, transportation, packaging, et cetera? We'll all be full-time students for decades before being allowed into a Walmart, I guess. Maybe that'll bring back smaller shops, with only a Master's degree in Ethical Shopping required.
For reference, a quick search turns up estimates of 120,000+ product SKUs on Walmart shelves. Kindof a lot to keep track of, no? And no, you're not permitted to respond with some "Oh, just don't be stuck in a shitty life/place where you're stuck buying corporate 'products'" crap or else I will post a vomiting emoji at you.
There's a lot of stuff to keep track of and "free" time is intentionally kept minimal so maybe don't blame people for not knowing their shampoo is environmentally unethical whilst they're worrying about their car that's in the shop because the airbags are more lethal than most crashes, they're just now learning to avoid potatoes in their diet ( 😭 ), their boss is making them work asinine hours, and they're still busy researching the sixty thousand products from the left half of the only shop in their area.
tl;dr: How the roasted goat bollocks is anyone supposed to "know better" for absolutely everything in life? Maybe it's fair to hope for some help on these things.
Customers are already mindless drones lol wtf are you talking about?
Lol
Here's a subtle thing...we say both the manufacturers and consumers have choices.
The manufacturer has the choice between all the thousands of possible ways to deliver a product, and picks one or two. A consumer has the choice between those two. ( or do without )
Those are all valid choices, but they are not alone of equal weight
Well it's not really a decision between "either not use them at all, or have a proper way to dispose of them"
Yes, there are applications we don't have alternative materials that we can agree are essential like safety products. That being said, we should definitely cut down our use of PFAS for items like floss, cosmetics, etc while continuing to look for alternatives. We use it far too much just for added convenience, but that convenience could be doing a lot of harm.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/say-goodbye-PFAS/97/i46
Kinda like the idea in this article, seems like a good compromise
Depending on their impact, it is often worthwhile to seek alternatives that are less effective or convenient, but also less dangerous. We've had materials in the past which were also deemed "essential", and yet we moved away from them.
A lot of miracle substances tend to be extremely dangerous. There's nothing quite like asbestos when it comes to fire and heat resistance, but we can still make firefighters' clothes, or fireproof buildings, or brakes, even if it means they're heavier or harder to manufacture. R134 and especially R12 make fantastic refrigerants for car AC systems, but we phased those out in favor of substances that are more complex and costly to implement because of the calamitous effect they had on the ozone layer. Carbon tet is an incredible solvent and great at extinguishing fires too. But we don't use that anymore either.
You could be right, maybe there is truly no way around PFOAs, but I'm just calling out a pattern here. And maybe there's no workaround right now that doesn't cause more harm, but with enough research and investment, we can get there in the future.
Good old copper is pretty hard to beat for a high temp/pressure (or vacuum). Chemical compatibility can be an issue though.
Viton gets used a lot & I'm struggling to think of alternatives to it.
I agree with you as a realist on the situation. We will never stop manufacturing them, at least for the foreseeable future. But we forget that something like recycling is the last stage of the 3R's to follow. We must first look to reduce consumption. We need to find alternatives where possible, and switch away from these forever chemicals anywhere we can. Next, while "reusing" is not the best term here, but we need to find ways to extend the life of the products that we are forced to use and try to use them up in every way we can. Then lastly we need to be recycling it as best as possible before we send it to an incinerator, or more realistically a developing nation landfill.
Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle is listed that way for a reason. Everyone always just jumps to the final stage then argue about how bad the recycling is while not even considering ways to reduce or reuse throughout the entire process.
Production of what, exactly?
...you really do need to be specific. Otherwise, it sounds like you're claiming that "the production processes" (of what, everything? all products in the entire economy?) require PFOAs- and that's plain bullshit.
Yes, there are some products for which there aren't equivalent inputs, and you don't need to be vague and generalize over all of productive everything in the economy in order to make that point- but given the opportunity to be specific, you specified "production of base chemicals that are used in various other follow-up products" and that's not a straight or specific answer to a direct question.
How right you are! https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/03/06/controversial-manufacturer-friendly-pfas-language-could-be-resurrected/
Humanity: