206
Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them
(www.livescience.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
206 points (95.6% liked)
Technology
58981 readers
4641 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You do realize, many of those "forever chemicals" have no alternative? PFOA for example is essential for modern production, because there is no other material known to withstand the temperatures and pressures needed in the production processes? So the alternative is either not to use them at all, with ALL the consequences - or we have use a proper way to dispose them.
Purification Plants are the same ~~argument~~ analogy.
Is there really no alternative in shampoo & disposable coffee cups?
I understand that these chemicals do have some outstanding properties but that doesn't mean unfettered production & use. Any risk assessment of a potential use really should include 100% resource recovery & disposal or recycling. This could have been done years ago but if industry can't self regulate then bans it is.
These chemicals make silent spring look like, um, er, weekend at Bernie's?
There is - but i personally think it's up to customers to not just grab what's on the shelf and do at least some basic research, because PFAS generally have to be marked on the bottle. Disposable coffee cups are just stupid all together.
I get the sentiment, but why not regulate stuff, before just banning it? And while we're at it, how about educating the customer?
You're just shifting responsibility to the population that has no real control over the matter. That's completely unethical.
And you are arguing that customers become mindless drones that don't need to think about any consequences when they consume. Which is exactly why we have fucked up the climate.
Coming back to the purification plant, that's the same thing if everyone would go shit in the Neighbors garden and flushing down anything down the toilet. We don't do that, because we know it would fuck up the purification plant, clogg the toilet and turn the garden in to a literal dump.
Choosing what you buy is also the same thing as choosing what to eat. Sure, if you don't know any better you may just eat junk food all day long. But the consequences are going to haunt you very much.
You want everyone to know all of the ethical concerns involved in every kind of product, from its contents to its manufacture, transportation, packaging, et cetera? We'll all be full-time students for decades before being allowed into a Walmart, I guess. Maybe that'll bring back smaller shops, with only a Master's degree in Ethical Shopping required.
For reference, a quick search turns up estimates of 120,000+ product SKUs on Walmart shelves. Kindof a lot to keep track of, no? And no, you're not permitted to respond with some "Oh, just don't be stuck in a shitty life/place where you're stuck buying corporate 'products'" crap or else I will post a vomiting emoji at you.
There's a lot of stuff to keep track of and "free" time is intentionally kept minimal so maybe don't blame people for not knowing their shampoo is environmentally unethical whilst they're worrying about their car that's in the shop because the airbags are more lethal than most crashes, they're just now learning to avoid potatoes in their diet ( 😭 ), their boss is making them work asinine hours, and they're still busy researching the sixty thousand products from the left half of the only shop in their area.
tl;dr: How the roasted goat bollocks is anyone supposed to "know better" for absolutely everything in life? Maybe it's fair to hope for some help on these things.
Customers are already mindless drones lol wtf are you talking about?
Maybe in the U.S., but not in Europe. We got the Nutri-Score, we got the animal wellfare labeling and we have open source databanks where you scan the barcode and get all the information about a product so you can actually make a decision.
Lol
People any afford rent and groceries anymore. You expect them to voluntarily look up what's going on with all the brands they are thinking about buying so they can choose the more expensive option? The only way to cut these oit is heavy regulation and punishment to corporations using these chemicals unnecessarily.
I've been wondering for quite some time why everything is going to shit. Now I think I get the picture. Thanks for the enlightenment.
And yes, I fucking expect people to think about their decisions and take responsibility serious - even if they don't have the means to get caviar or Champagne all the time. But hey, I'll probably be labeled as boomer in the next few years, so whatever floats your boat!
Judging by all these downvotes, I guess that ship has sailed a long time and maybe I shouldn't care so much 🤔
You're getting downvoted for being a moron who thinks that the free market will get ride of dangerous substances and business practices. The general public hates pretty much every major company, yet they all keep getting bigger and stronger because most people simply cant avoid it. There is still slavery at every step of coffee production despite literal decades of "fair trade" branding on coffee. Hell, people have known for 60 years that cigarettes cause cancer, yet millions of people have been born, started smoking, and died of lung cancer since all cigarettes are required to be labeled with "smoking causes cancer". But you expect the average consumer to stop buying products that don't directly harm them and cause damage to the environment instead.
The only solution is governments stepping in and regulating when PFAS and other forever chemicals can be used. If 3M decides to outsource production to countries that allow for those chemicals, punish them and forbid those products from being imported. We have 40 years of proof that neoliberalism and free markets are useless for anything other than making the most powerful corporations shit tons of money. The only systemic problems that we managed to solve in that time are acid rain and the ozone depletion from CFC pollution, and those were only solved by government mandated phaseouts of dangerous chemicals.
Here's a subtle thing...we say both the manufacturers and consumers have choices.
The manufacturer has the choice between all the thousands of possible ways to deliver a product, and picks one or two. A consumer has the choice between those two. ( or do without )
Those are all valid choices, but they are not alone of equal weight
Well it's not really a decision between "either not use them at all, or have a proper way to dispose of them"
Yes, there are applications we don't have alternative materials that we can agree are essential like safety products. That being said, we should definitely cut down our use of PFAS for items like floss, cosmetics, etc while continuing to look for alternatives. We use it far too much just for added convenience, but that convenience could be doing a lot of harm.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/say-goodbye-PFAS/97/i46
Kinda like the idea in this article, seems like a good compromise
Oh i absolutely agree with you. Especially in cosmetics and other "day to day" products that are disposable.
But that's also exactly the argument - make companies and customers dispose of these products correctly, because banning PFAS outright will have devastating consequences. (Like 3M just shifting production to China from Europe. Europe had the highest safety and production standards for PTFE - now they are going to be produced in china with absolutely no standards )
And if there is a proper way to recycle those PFAS, there is no need to shift production to places where there are no standards so you can get a porper goretex jacket (for example), because phasing out PTFE for something other that's substitutable now has an incentive.
Depending on their impact, it is often worthwhile to seek alternatives that are less effective or convenient, but also less dangerous. We've had materials in the past which were also deemed "essential", and yet we moved away from them.
A lot of miracle substances tend to be extremely dangerous. There's nothing quite like asbestos when it comes to fire and heat resistance, but we can still make firefighters' clothes, or fireproof buildings, or brakes, even if it means they're heavier or harder to manufacture. R134 and especially R12 make fantastic refrigerants for car AC systems, but we phased those out in favor of substances that are more complex and costly to implement because of the calamitous effect they had on the ozone layer. Carbon tet is an incredible solvent and great at extinguishing fires too. But we don't use that anymore either.
You could be right, maybe there is truly no way around PFOAs, but I'm just calling out a pattern here. And maybe there's no workaround right now that doesn't cause more harm, but with enough research and investment, we can get there in the future.
Well, since working in the industry, i can say with a very high confidence: There will be substitutes, but not for everything - at least at this point in time. There may soon very well be a breakthrough in material science, but at this point there is no alternative in some use cases (like gaskets, that have to sustain extreme temperatures and pressures...).
But i absolutely do agree with you.
Good old copper is pretty hard to beat for a high temp/pressure (or vacuum). Chemical compatibility can be an issue though.
Viton gets used a lot & I'm struggling to think of alternatives to it.
I agree with you as a realist on the situation. We will never stop manufacturing them, at least for the foreseeable future. But we forget that something like recycling is the last stage of the 3R's to follow. We must first look to reduce consumption. We need to find alternatives where possible, and switch away from these forever chemicals anywhere we can. Next, while "reusing" is not the best term here, but we need to find ways to extend the life of the products that we are forced to use and try to use them up in every way we can. Then lastly we need to be recycling it as best as possible before we send it to an incinerator, or more realistically a developing nation landfill.
Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle is listed that way for a reason. Everyone always just jumps to the final stage then argue about how bad the recycling is while not even considering ways to reduce or reuse throughout the entire process.
Production of what, exactly?
for example production of base chemicals that are used in various other follow up products, lot's of efficiency due to special membranes and so on.
...you really do need to be specific. Otherwise, it sounds like you're claiming that "the production processes" (of what, everything? all products in the entire economy?) require PFOAs- and that's plain bullshit.
Yes, there are some products for which there aren't equivalent inputs, and you don't need to be vague and generalize over all of productive everything in the economy in order to make that point- but given the opportunity to be specific, you specified "production of base chemicals that are used in various other follow-up products" and that's not a straight or specific answer to a direct question.