Re:Drinking diet sodas daily during pregnancy linked to auti...
by htag on Saturday September 30, 2023 @02:04PM
(#37718067)
I'm not capable of doing a full analysis on this question. I don't mean to say that this ban isn't worth doing, I meant to acknowledge that this has a downside. Let me throw out a few bullet points of those downsides of reducing the rate of new chemical compounds introduced to society.
* We are often creating chemicals that do the job of existing chemicals safer and more efficient. This ban would probably include a grandfather clause for old chemicals, and thus we might be using inferior products and doing more harm than we otherwise could. Look at refrigerants as an example of a chemical compound that has improved over the decades.
* Many chemical compounds introduced in the last 100 years directly improve productivity. The United States is in economic competition with other regions of the world. We could be creating a disadvantage that reduces our geo-political power.
* Many of these chemical compound increase quality of life. There's a strong unitarian argument for sucralose and polyurethane insulation.
Could you elaborate on why this is a problem? It seems to me that there is not inherent right to introduce new chemicals into our lives, and I would prefer this not be done without thorough risk assessment studies.
In the medical industry, introducing a new medicine requires years of testing for something that will be given to a tiny slice of the population. I find it odd that there does not seem to be a similar process for chemicals that could be spread throughout the entire population.