As lawmakers around the world weigh bans of 'forever chemicals,” many manufacturers are pushing back, saying there often is no substitute.

  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Also back then, we didn’t have massive populations. Most of the world struggled to survive. Finding food was a all-day activity. Should we go back to that?

    • iegod@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Without the haber process modern civilization could not be sustained. We cannot go back without massive population losses. Dunno about you but I’m not picking which of my friends and family aren’t important.

    • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Cancer causing materials are not a necessity to support global scale populations.

      Also, I frankly wouldn’t mind returning to a world where almost half my time was my own and not my employer’s.

      • SaltySalamander@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Also, I frankly wouldn’t mind returning to a world where almost half my time was my own and not my employer’s.

        It still wouldn’t actually be your own. You currently work to afford your lifestyle. You’d still work the same amount, probably more, but you certainly wouldn’t have your current lifestyle.

      • Haywire@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You can have that today. You can still forage for food. It is even easier today.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      So, but we don’t need cancerous materials to do so. If you missed it, that was the point

    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      So we lose non-stick pans, how does that make us return to a hunter gatherer society?

      • Richard@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Maybe consider for once that these compounds are not only used for pans, but also for other applications, like electronics?

        • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I wasnt aware the laws were targeting electronics. Are we talking all electronics or just some?

      • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Non stick pans, fire retardant mattresses, nonslip shoes, many forms of plastic, stain resistant shirts, water proof jackets, fume suppressants, metal coating/plating, high quality surfactants (ie lots of soaps), many types of pipe and the joining compounds used in plumbing, and the list goes on.

        • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          What? This stuff is in soaps and plastics? Wow this stuff is everywhere.

          Is this list all products effected or the products that have no known replacement?

          • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            It’s not even a dent in the list of all effected products. For the no known replacement there should be a preface, we can generally make things without PFAS still, but PFAS is a major reason why the item is desirable.

            For example, we can go back to lye and castile soap but we probably won’t be able to have laundry or dish detergent. The alternatives exist, they just don’t function well enough to be replacements. Without detergents you would need to pre-wash your dishes and laundry (or completely skip using) before using your washing machine and dish washer (hand wash everything). This says nothing about industrial usage of surfactants which is also really important.

            We’d still have plastics, but we probably wouldn’t have any plastics which are naturally “slippy,” smooth, or soft. Hard brittle plastics only.

            An example I used earlier, we could still have metal coating/plating, but it would probably look more like something from the early 1800s. PFAS is used in the process to suppress fumes and also to protect against corrosion, staining, and weathering.

            I don’t know enough to say how far back it would set us with computers. I have the sense they’d still exist, but we’d be set back several decades.

            • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Well, then I don’t think it makes sense for an immediate blanket ban on it.

              I suspect the best path forward is to set maximum limits and slowly adjust those down over time. I really don’t think we want to continue to be inundated with carcinogens.

    • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      What a wonderfully unrelated to my post comment you’ve made. Since you are so kind as to make up what you want to argue against, perhaps you won’t mind making up the response so those of us on topic can get on with discussing that topic.