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