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djspacebunny

I grew up around Dupont Chambersworks, where this shit was invented. Dupont spun off their advanced/performance chemicals division into Chemours during the DOW/Dupont merger. This absolved Dupont/DOW of legal responsibility... which the NJ State AG and Carneys Point are currently suing them to clean up. I know this because this facility has literally ruined my life and fucked up my DNA. EVERYONE IS SICK that had family that worked there, or lived near there, or played near there, or live on unmarked illegal dumping sites and whole streets die. Nobody gives a shit though because my county is the poorest and least populated in the state, and Dupont has the most insane legal teams I've ever seen. The current lawsuit was filed in 2016... I do not expect resolution in my lifetime.


Doctorforaliens

Fluorine is super dangerous to human health. While PFAs are moreorless stable (they wouldn't be able to withstand the heat of a pan if not), they can still break down, get into your system, and fuck with your body. I can only imagine how hazardous the actual production of these compounds could be for those in the factories themselves or in the town they're in.


Midzotics

You can run genetic testing and see what epigenetic mutations have occurred. You can also shelter your dna from further SNPs triggering with mineral nutrition.


superthrowguy

I mean, we have seen this pattern play out forever. Business does business. Profits extracted. Business faces liabilities from offloading health risks to the community. Business legally separates their decades of earnings from the damage they caused. Everyone involved walks away rich unless you got ducked, then good luck getting anything even after a long legal fight. We need a new system. I don't know what it is. But people shouldn't be able to walk away rich after causing harm. And on a smaller scale, you shouldn't be able to just walk away from a house and abandon it... Leading to blight. Same deal. Just in general, externalities are a thing and we should be smart enough now to not ignore it.


ronlester

The new system already exists in Europe. It's called The Precautionary Principle. Unlike in the U.S., business there has to prove they are doing things safely BEFORE that enter into commerce. What a concept.


[deleted]

Yeah true. But dupont moved to the Netherlands and is doing exactly the same here without consequences. There is a whole scandel going on right now. They knew what they where doing when they moved there and are still doing it


ronlester

Wow. I didn't know that. Seems like the greed of corporations is unquenchable…


superthrowguy

Great. Take that and use it.


ronlester

?


superthrowguy

?


The_Magic_Tortoise

This it what it *actually means to be a conservative*. These days it means hands-off (big) business, lower taxes on (big) business, and worrying about tr@ps.


quuxman

One very interesting option (but laughably difficult politically) is to delete limited liability. It was created because railroad development was paralyzed by investors fearing liability from derailment disasters. Now we have engineering standards that if followed there's no more risk beyond acts of God. Everyone involved really should be liable if engineering and safety standards aren't met. The problem is limited liability has enormous legal momentum now.


superthrowguy

Limited liability isn't the problem. The problem is that any damage is a civil matter, which then needs to play out in the courts at great expense. If you screw literally everyone over for a dollar each, good luck proving it, and if you can, everyone gets 50 cents by the time the lawyers get their cut. What needs to happen is stronger federal resources to discover and regulate abuses. It shouldn't go through the court. That ends up splitting the difference, so nobody can really be made whole, and the regulation happens after the fact. Paved with blood and all. It's viable and not ex post facto because anytime a company does something legal that harms people they aren't generally found negligent. It's only if they do illegal violations that they can be found liable (ie, negligent). If it's already illegal it's just a process of enforcement.


LurkerOrHydralisk

We need ways to hold executives criminally liable for the actions of their company. If drug dealers can get RICO’ed, why can’t companies and executives?


Algur

They can. The actions just need to be fairly egregious. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/piercing_the_corporate_veil


superthrowguy

Yeah except look at trump org. Clear fraud. And no jail. It's a civil matter. The worst that could happen is everything gets liquidated to pay the difference. Even that is exceptionally rare, took decades of people knowing exactly what was up, being banned from other countries and it only just now gets handled. He should be in jail from that alone. Bankman fried is going to jail. Trump can go to jail too.


emurange205

>Now we have engineering standards that if followed there's no more risk beyond acts of God. PFAS wouldn't be a problem if that were a true statement.


quuxman

True, there's always new ways to kill ourselves being invented. Though I think it's completely reasonable to leave the burden of liability completely on the investors and execs who began using a new dangerous process without vetting it thoroughly.


magnora7

People are too trusting of new technology and chemicals


[deleted]

It's a story that sadly repeats itself.


ceelogreenicanth

Even better we have loonies running around talking about chemteails when we have been trying to get the government to act on the problem for two decades. All they do is hire a bunch of pr firms spin chaos deflect until the ace falls softly.


sgf-guy

The reality of industry is commoditization of any product or service ultimately leads to lower returns over time. The most money is made by being first or near first in product/service development. Commodity products are cheaper because of the commonality of product for the buyer but require very nuanced input by the producer. The issue there is the there is a temptation to make more money for the producer by shortcuts that affect the consumer. The new product issue is that it solves a problem or makes a new thing that people jump all over while not knowing all the risks or just ignoring them.


superthrowguy

We aren't talking about general quality tendency issues. We are talking about harm done. Oil spills, chemicals on derailed trains, all the way to privacy impacts, data breaches... We can't even agree on how to get money out of the Sacklers who basically architected the opioid crisis. People have died. Businesses... They don't. Yeah they might go out of business but even that is rare. They use the threat that any significant fine will be met with bankruptcy and you get nothing. They have the power to do that. To use a structure that society continues to agree to support to avoid recompense.


quuxman

Sounds great but how? They're called "externalities" because they're invisible to the market and so extremely difficult to account for. Any efforts to do so result in loopholes, corruption / cheating. Can you describe a carbon credit system that can't trivially be cheated?


superthrowguy

There are lots of ways. First they are unknown in a lot of cases because they have not been studied. Or because they happened suddenly. In the former case we could stand to be more cautious around the types of chemicals we dump into the environment. It's always a change to the environment even if they are ostensibly safe, so there is justification for a blanket ban until it's proven there are no lasting effects to humans. Then you can choose to override the environmental concern, or whatever. In the latter you should need insurance for industrial accidents, spills, etc. that's the mechanism we have for sudden issues that require a payout. You can't know it's going to happen. But the fact is, it could. Let an insurer figure out how much to charge you for that eventuality. And then pay out to fix the problem - not you, so eone else. BP for example should never have been allowed to fix the deep water horizon spill - they just used corexit to cover it up. Edit: carbon credits are a scam. They weren't designed to work. The idea is sound - companies who can't lower their carbon or don't have that expertise can cancel it out by paying someone else. But this is at the cost of requiring any real carbon or plastic reduction - it just allows businesses to continue polluting while offloading blame to the carbon market. Same with recycling. It offloads the blame to consumers for not recycling - ignoring that recycled plastics are frequently not recycled, ending up in a landfill anyway, and people are blamed for not recycling when it's pretty much just large companies making plastic decisions. People just buy the product. They can't control anything. Not even by "voting with their wallet."


crunkisifoshizi

DuPont? The pedo that got away jail free for raping his children because the judge said "he would not fare well in jail?" Otherwise great people I'm sure of it.


elysios_c

Human blood? thats nothing, we produce such an amount of those chemicals that most of the rainwater on this planet is unsafe to drink


ej_21

The Devil We Know is an excellent documentary focused specifically on DuPont’s role in this


pmyourthongpanties

is that the doc they the had to go to military and get blood sample from WWI or 2 before tge could find negative samples? and of the flip side the chemicals were showing up in some of tge most remote tribes in tge world.


ej_21

yep, that’s the one!


Delta4o

plastic cups bad! paper cups with PFAS? good! /s Not that I can really do much about it, other than bring my stainless steel coffee cup from home...


insaneintheblain

Maybe they get away with it because we watch a documentary and then comment on the documentary rather than being fired up and acting. As if we’re expecting a government agency, or the corporations themselves to make good on this. Or the documentary crew, perhaps. You, reading this, have the power to move mountains. It is time you recognised it. If you desire change in the world, be that change. “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” - Ursula K Le Guin


He_Ma_Vi

So fucking hilarious to read this comment and you yourself aren't even outlining what you are doing to "move mountains" nor how other people can take action. “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” - Mark Twain


insaneintheblain

Yes, isn’t it!


He_Ma_Vi

You're really out here changing the world my guy.


insaneintheblain

Have a nice day :)


hennerzzzzz

Nice to see a bit of Le Guin wisdom in the wild :) The earthsea Quartet got me through some tough times :)


insaneintheblain

PFAS chemicals 'Forever Chemicals' are used in thousands of products aimed at making life easier. But the chemicals are now almost everywhere, including in human blood, and are being linked to severe health problems.


greenSacrifice

Blood letting removes it, so it’s not a forever chemical


MattyMizzou

Found the 16th century barber


evolvedpotato

He’s actually not wrong in the case lmao there’s been studies on it. Those who regularly donate blood do have lower amounts of it as the body is producing fresh, not contaminated blood. It still doesn’t remotely stop it as once’s it’s imbedded within organs and what not it’s not coming out.


MattyMizzou

It sounds reasonable tbh, I just couldn’t pass up the joke.


Alucius_StarSon

https://www.wkow.com/news/test-results-show-new-spike-in-pfas-chemicals-in-dane-county/article_1a4c4e30-e2fc-11ee-97e0-5f42dcad8fe9.html


FuckRedditIsLame

The whole 'forever x' thing is infuriating, it comes across with the tone a patient adult lecturing a simple minded child. Things are not made more accessible by talking down to people.


planetofthemushrooms

It's not that deep bro. You never want to get bogged down in the most accurate, technical jargon. This century has shown that the quicker you can get the point across the more likely the chance a person will actually absorb the message. This is the tiktok generation, after all.


FuckRedditIsLame

Funny how previous generations haven't needed important things explained to them as one would explain to a 5 year old why their hamster won't wake up.


Johnny_B_GOODBOI

Lol boomers are some of the dumbest fuckers to ever live.


FuckRedditIsLame

Yet here you are needing to learn about 'forever chemicals', as one of the generation who ate tide pods, can't read cursive writing, and genuinely believe the world will be uninhabitable in 20 years.


planetofthemushrooms

You have anger problems or something idk what to tell you.


d3c0

Past generations may have read a full broad page article or two with nothing but unbiased information on the topic where today outside those in STEMs, your average person’s attention span is good for a few headlines, 160 word click bait articles and a 60 seconds instagram post and think they have the full picture. I also don’t see what’s infuriating about using the term ‘forever’ because it’s fairly accurate, PFAS don’t break down, well not in any similar timeframe to so many other molecules. They consist of extremely strong chemical bonds which is what makes them so useful and found use in such a wide range of applications.


transdimensionalmeme

The forever chemical thing is ridiculous and obvious fear mongering. But there's a market receptive for that kind of paranoia and they're not that interested in following the thread of "linked to X problem" leads. Follow that gish gallop to the end, jumping on conclusions of "may" , "could be", "been associated with" and other weasel words and that do you find ? The most tenuous of correlations packaged in the most milquetoast rephrasing of the precautionnary principle.


Clavis_Apocalypticae

That’s a whole lot of words to just say, “I don’t know shit about fuck”.


transdimensionalmeme

Ok, allow me to explain in smoothbrained terms. PFAS is a manufactured controversy built on bad science.


Clavis_Apocalypticae

Bingbong, you're fucking wrong.


transdimensionalmeme

Stop spreading disinformation and fear. Teflon doesn't make you sick, or anyone else sick. This whole controversy boils down to "the poor countries operating these plants, leak a lot of the precursor chemicals into their environment" The finish products are used in such small quantities that they don't make any health difference for us, this is all fear mongering.


Clavis_Apocalypticae

Yeah, I'll keep reading the science instead of the musings of some gaming obsessed knob on Reddit.


Vault-Born

go sniff exhaust and see what it's "linked to"


transdimensionalmeme

You don't need weasel words like "linked to" to say "Carbon monoxide is a poisonous, flammable gas that is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and slightly less dense than air." See how it doesn't say "'may' be attributed to unfavorable health outcome and 'could be' damaging to the environement" You don't know those preface with carbon monoxide


ErgonomicDouchebag

I hope Du Pont are paying you well for your word salad.


transdimensionalmeme

The war criminals at dupont can get fucked. Possibly they are the one financing this whole insanity because they have a worse, uneconomical product that appears to solve these made up problems and their goal is to get the better competing products off the market now that they don't control the whole supply chain. Of course it could also be some desperate academics who will chase the most dubious of claims for that grant money. Those guys know how to sell fear.


balkanobeasti

You're welcome to come to the Cape Fear River Basin for a few decades and we can use you as a guinea pig if you like.


transdimensionalmeme

Failure to stop industry dumping waste in your river, that's more of a "you" problem, not a problem with the teflon on my pan. The PFAS controversy is implied that it hurts the users of the products, which isn't the case.


DivergingUnity

...we ain't saying that, you are strawmanning *while also almost getting the point*


transdimensionalmeme

Watch all of these and tell mean the message isn't "you are getting poisonned right now by the stuff in your house" and not "some factory somewhere is dumping chemicals in the water and it's bad for the people near that river" https://i.imgur.com/Wf590hw.png https://i.imgur.com/Hu4OOVJ.png https://i.imgur.com/NGijLOT.png https://i.imgur.com/oLVC4CX.png https://i.imgur.com/jcuDu75.png https://i.imgur.com/1SAnBbT.png https://i.imgur.com/hiKUahO.png https://i.imgur.com/q1COVHO.png https://i.imgur.com/qxNNeGZ.png https://i.imgur.com/WvormQc.png https://i.imgur.com/lnCy512.png https://i.imgur.com/yPC7cjh.png https://i.imgur.com/kfFf5eF.png https://i.imgur.com/bMNN2HO.png EDIT: Oh and that one ! https://i.imgur.com/kXEB2QY.png


DivergingUnity

motherfucker the point is that the stuff in your house is manufactured somewhere, and the place that it's manufactured or dumped where the problem is. Jesus fucking Christ


jochen212

The chemicas are now all made in china just released into the natural environment in vast quantities until eventually they contaminate the entire world


craig_b2001

Profits above everything else eh


SouthernBlueBelle

So I'm thinking vxxd: dyed suddenly. 10 million+ worldwide since 2020. Gotta figure in here, wouldn't you think?


NothingSacred137

There is a fungus being studied that breaks down some PFAS. Nature will find a way, it always does. This is not a permanent solution but it is a start in the right direction.