Tag Archives: chemicals

April 2023 in Review

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I made several posts with numbers on crime, suicide, and poverty. The U.S. is a violent, unequal country. I’ve talked about these issues a lot, so far without any noticeable effect on our political class. So I’ve picked some other things below.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Chemicals, they’re everywhere! And there were 20,000 accidents with them in 2022 that caused injuries, accidents, or death. Some are useful, some are risky, and some are both. We could do a better job handling and transporting them, we could get rid of the truly useless and dangerous ones, and we could work harder on finding substitutes for the useful but dangerous ones. And we could get rid of a corrupt political system where chemical companies pay the cost of running for office and then reward candidates who say and do what they are told.

Most hopeful story: There has been some progress on phages, viruses intentionally designed to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Also, anti-aging pills may be around the corner.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I had heard the story of the Google engineer who was fired for publicly releasing a conversation with LaMDA, a Google AI. But I hadn’t read the conversation. Well, here it is.

chemicals

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I happened to be in a Philadelphia grocery store last weekend when the city sent out an emergency alert (the terrifying “take cover” variety you expect for a tornado or incoming missiles) telling people to switch to bottled water. Chaos ensued, and taht is in my supposedly high class “gentrified” neighborhood (which is filthy by the way, lacks adequate services, is relatively diverse in terms of race of religion, and does admittedly have high rent and property taxes for us working schmucks who actually have to pay them – but I digress…)

Chemicals are terrifying. Also necessary and useful for modern industrial civilization. This article in Vox does a reasonably balanced job of talking about them. The trick

There’s a reason plastics and petrochemicals are in nearly everything. They’re dirt cheap — and useful. The industry has become extremely efficient at converting fossil fuels into sets of materials that are lighter in weight and pliable, making them as adaptable for medical equipment as they are for lip balm, nail polish, clothing, and single-use coffee cups.

But the adaptability comes at a cost. These chemicals can conceivably be produced and transported safely — at least on paper. But the volume of accidents shows how often they aren’t. In 2022, according to federal data, there were more than 20,000 recorded times hazardous materials caused injury, accidents, or death while in transit. “It’s a very risky chain every step of the way,” said Judith Enck, a former regional EPA administrator and president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics.

Those risks aren’t going away anytime soon. Petrochemical production in the US is booming, derived from the larger boom in US oil and gas supply. And the industry’s broadening footprint means more communities are coming in direct contact with carcinogens and endocrine-disruptors that affect humans and animals in ways scientists still don’t fully understand. Most of the time, people aren’t coming into contact with petrochemicals through train derailments, but in more mundane ways.

Vox

Solutions exist. First, identify the chemicals that are not useful and not proven safe and just ban them unless and until they can be proven safe. Antimicrobial hand soap is one I like to pick on. And all that shit they put in shampoo that doesn’t need to be there. Second, identify the chemicals that are useful but not safe. All kinds of plastics, building materials, and energy related chemicals fall in this category. Water disinfectants, food preservatives, cleaning chemicals. A risk management structure is the rational approach here – minimize the risks of manufacturing, transporting, and using these things. Get a handle on how safe they really are. If they are not 100% safe for people and the environment, keep looking to substitutes that are safe and equally effective.

There are rational tradeoffs to be made between comfort and convenience on the one hand, and health and safety risks on the other hand. But our politicians who are bought and paid for by the chemical-industrial complex are not in a position to be in responsible charge of this.

air pollution causes diabetes

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In addition to all the other problems it causes, there is now pretty strong evidence that air pollution is a factor in diabetes.

The mainstream media is not providing wall-to-wall coverage on the Trump administration’s attack on benefit-cost analysis. So let me just point out that a lot of the benefits used to justify regulations are based on air pollution, where the benefits appear to massively outweigh the costs of the regulations. Trump is attacking the methods used by government agencies to make these estimates. They probably can use some updates based on the latest science and risk management approaches, but I don’t think the basic conclusions are likely to change.

I happen to be in the water pollution regulation business, and I happen to know that the benefit-cost case for further regulation on the water side can be a bit flimsy in terms of human health. A few reasons for this are that a lot of progress has already been made in recent decades, drinking water treatment technology is pretty good and not as dependent as you might think on source water quality, and other than a few sandy ocean beaches the public is just not recreating in natural water bodies all that much. None of this is to say that we can afford to roll back the progress we have made, or that we have come close to restoring anything like the highly diverse and productive aquatic ecosystems of the past, which have simply disappeared from memory. We are all worried about chemicals in our water and food and want to be cautious, but again there is not overwhelming evidence that the low levels of useful chemicals in them are doing us more harm than good. But air pollution is not like this. It is absolutely unambiguous that the benefits of reducing air pollution outweigh the costs by a huge margin. Don’t believe any propaganda or disinformation you hear to the contrary.

everyday chemicals and the developing brain

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This is a disturbing article about the effects of common chemicals on childrens’ developing brains. I don’t get too alarmed when I hear this stuff from hte anti-vaccine and anti-GMO crowd, but this article is signed by dozens of scientists who study the brain.

Children in America today are at an unacceptably high risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the brain and nervous system including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disabilities, and other learning and behavioral disabilities. These are complex disorders with multiple causes—genetic, social, and environmental. The contribution of toxic chemicals to these disorders can be prevented…These include chemicals that are used extensively in consumer products and that have become widespread in the environment. Some are chemicals to which children and pregnant women are regularly exposed, and they are detected in the bodies of virtually all Americans in national surveys conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vast majority of chemicals in industrial and consumer products undergo almost no testing for developmental neurotoxicity or other health effects.

To me, there is a difference between chemicals used in industry and agriculture, and chemicals found in everyday household products. We should be looking for truly safe and nontoxic substitutes for all of them, but the latter are particularly important both because the public is exposed to them directly, and because in some cases they are just not necessary. When I read the label on a bottle of shampoo I can’t help wondering if the chemical soup that is in there is really necessary to cleanse my hair, and even if were, cleansing my hair is not a matter of life and death.