Re:Toxic fluorinated compounds found in drinking water of 33...
by matt4077 on Monday January 30, 2017 @06:29PM
(#13526057)
I tried to find some data on that, but it appears that there is no data available showing definite health hazards of these compounds.
Getting such data can be difficult. Animal models can often be wrong: the toxicity may be specific to humans, or the damage may require exposure over time frames than the animals' life span, or it only manifests under rare circumstances (i. e. interactions with drugs).
The best data you can get may be from people who were exposed to the compounds unusually high degrees, usually because they worked with them. But that group of people may be too small, or not diverse enough (we've long avoided exposing pregnant women to industrial chemicals), or the nature of their work exposed them to different chemicals muddling any results.
You say "Its irresponsible to make policy decisions without knowing the actual risk level", but I'd say that you can't not make a decision: taking the view that a chemical is safe until proven otherwise is as much a decision as the opposite. The EU has started to assume new compounds to be dangerous until proven otherwise – I believe the US may still be doing the opposite.
Ethanol (i. e. alcohol) is also a particularly bad unit of measurement, considering its effects on human health are not just somewhat disputed, but apparently highly unusual. There is quite a lot of evidence for beneficial effects of alcohol, possibly even at rather high dosages (although the effects on cancer, which you mention specifically, are probably closer to a standard linear dose-response relationship,)
Getting such data can be difficult. Animal models can often be wrong: the toxicity may be specific to humans, or the damage may require exposure over time frames than the animals' life span, or it only manifests under rare circumstances (i. e. interactions with drugs).
The best data you can get may be from people who were exposed to the compounds unusually high degrees, usually because they worked with them. But that group of people may be too small, or not diverse enough (we've long avoided exposing pregnant women to industrial chemicals), or the nature of their work exposed them to different chemicals muddling any results.
You say "Its irresponsible to make policy decisions without knowing the actual risk level", but I'd say that you can't not make a decision: taking the view that a chemical is safe until proven otherwise is as much a decision as the opposite. The EU has started to assume new compounds to be dangerous until proven otherwise – I believe the US may still be doing the opposite.
Ethanol (i. e. alcohol) is also a particularly bad unit of measurement, considering its effects on human health are not just somewhat disputed, but apparently highly unusual. There is quite a lot of evidence for beneficial effects of alcohol, possibly even at rather high dosages (although the effects on cancer, which you mention specifically, are probably closer to a standard linear dose-response relationship,)