I hope your answer to the first question is not zero because things like PFAS do have benefits that are directly translatable to health outcomes. For example, when used for water proofing clothing, they might prevent hypothermia and save lives in extreme conditions. Plastic water bottles enable the distribution of clean water in areas that don't have (can't afford) good infrastructure. Less glass and more plastic means less broken glass on city streets, which I appreciate as a dog owner who doesn't want his pooch to step on broken shards.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Switching from lead and MTBE to ethanol as an anti knock additive in auto fuel was an objective win. There are more wins like that out there I believe.
Basically, every Chevron employee working with those products will likely develop cancer as a result.
Environmental issues are tough. It’s easy to focus on your dogs’ paw and not even be aware that people are needlessly suffering and dying to protect it.
A) it's not as clear cut as you say
B) it is as clear cut as you say, and I agree with you
But if the latter were true, there would probably be a high profile post on HN or elsewhere about it.
> For exposure assessment, EPA develops conservative exposure scenarios which are designed to provide conservative estimates of exposure; this allows EPA to have high confidence – when it finds no risks of concern – that this is in fact the case. In some instances, due to a lack of information on which to based exposure estimates, the conservative assumptions can lead to an over-estimate of risk. For one of the PMN substances in this integrated risk assessment (a jet fuel), the Agency divided the total projected future annual production volume of the new jet fuel by the total number of locations expected to receive the fuel, and then assumed each location could be an end-use location (e.g., airport) and that all the fuel would be burned there. The scenario that was modeled effectively presumed that every plane at the airport was idling on a runway burning an entire tank’s fuel without ever taking off, that the components of the fuel that contribute to c risk are not fully combusted and are present in the exhaust, and that residents living nearby (in a fenceline community) would continuously breathe the exhaust each day over many years in their lifetime.
It's unfortunate we don't have a better risk assessment.
One branch of my family grew up near the Mobil Refinery on the Newtown Creek in Queens, NYC. 12/12 have had cancers from that place, as do many others.
It’s a call for government regulators who aren’t industry pushovers and conservative evaluation and approval approaches to novel materials. We need a system that won’t enable us to continually find new ways to poison ourselves, but still allows for material innovation. Activists and journalism professionals are key stakeholders in this effort, holding (or at least trying to) government and industry accountable. We continue to need people like Paul who talk about this. Same story, different materials.
(walkable communities are of importance and significance as well of course)