• There is evidence of carcinogenicity in animals. (Multiple, consistent studies)
• The substance is shown to directly or indirectly cause chromosomal damage or mutations in a way that is relevant to humans.
• There are no or limited human studies, they are inconclusive, or otherwise inadequate. ((Note: This is sort of a "Why isn't this classified higher?" factor.)). ((If a substance isn't in widespread use, it is kind of hard to design an ethical human study. I mean, you aren't going to have some of your test subjects drink a bunch of likely carcinogen each morning.))
So this is a a classification for "Let's maybe not go nuts with this stuff, and someone really ought to check this out. And if you plan to ship tons of this stuff you might want to talk to your lawyers and lawsuit judgement mitigation team."
I didn't manage to find an exhaustive list of things the EPA has listed with this, but I found one that included higher risks as well, and in my little warehouse/workshop I identified 8 things at a casual glance that I have in inventory or generate. Proper use of these have minimal exposure to my squishy bits for most of them, and the others a well informed user should know to take adequate precautions. (e.g. "wood dust": wear a respirator)
The US does not currently fund the EPA to commission studies to further investigate likely carcinogens, so they stay on the list for ages.
"Carcinogenic risk estimate for exposure to DCPA, HCB, and
dioxin/furans through food were 3.5e-7, and 7e-8, respectively. All of these risk estimates are within the range (zero to 1e-6) generally considered to be negligible by the Agency. Thus, the Agency concludes that DCPA use
does not pose a significant excess lifetime cancer risk." [0]
while i whole heartedly agree, science and testing takes funding and being more strict requires teeth. neither of which is a popular idea with some people.
being more strict would show results, but like above, showing results isn’t a popular idea with some people, they need inefficiencies to point towards.
Why bring this IARC list up out of the blue? The parent comment mentioned an EPA classification and you brought up a list of IARC classifications. The EPA and IARC frequently disagree on their classifications.
Probably because you don't find a list from the EPA.
The two categories are very similar, they are sort of aimed at the same result but have slightly different criteria. e.g. the EPA considers exposure levels, IARC requires at least some human evidence. So you wouldn't say one is stricter than the other, just different ways of skinning a cat.
Red meat is on IARC 2A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2A. The IARC is an agency of the World Health Organization, so these lists don't impose any obligations on the FDA.
The parent comment's mention of the IARC list is completely irrelevant. IARC doesn't have anything to do with the EPA.
Edit: Prior to it being edited, the comment I responded to here posed the question to the original IARC comment of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it classified as a carcinogen by IARC.
Isn't that their point? If the Chemical in question is a carcinogen, but a weak one categorized the same way as other foods like red meat, then it probably isn't going to get banned.
The parent of their comment seems to be confused by how the EPA and IARC are not related, so I don't think they do have a point. Prior to my comment, the comment you responded to originally posed the question of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it being on IARCs list, before being stealth edited.
I don't think the point was organizational, that decisions by the IARC must be respected by the EPA, but more common sensical: if a substance is roughly equivalent in risk to food, which is ingested, then it surely can't be more harmful to spray it than it is to eat it. That may not hold in all situations, but it doesn't seem crazy as a general principle.
> DCPA exposure in pregnant women can cause thyroid level changes in their unborn babies. These changes are linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life.
I think an even better question is why private organizations are allowed to spray random chemicals all over the environment without the safety being proven first. This will keep happening with some new alternative substance if the current approach continues.
Right, this is the core problem. We've seen this happen with literal hundreds, if not thousands of substances.
Companies can, and do, develop various new compounds and then immediately start using them. There're only stringent regulations for food and medicine, but the stuff around it isn't protected. In addition, many of these chemicals make it into local water. We've had to set up countless superfund sites to clean it up later.
Our approach of reactionary vs proactive just doesn't work. Typically, these companies don't do safety tests. Sometimes, companies don't even know what exactly goes into their products.
The fundamental divide in approaching regulation between the US and Europe. The US prefers libertarianism and only regulates (if at all) when problems grow so large they cannot be swept under the rug any more, while European countries generally prefer "big governments" that have an obligation to protect every single citizen.
The US may have more innovation and a more powerful economy as a result, but at least we don't have drinking water taps that can be set ablaze because the drinking water is oversaturated with fracking gas.
As a European I find your assessment appalling. The oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre, European governments only protect their big governments. The ban of US pesticides is to stifle American infiltration of EU agriculture, and basically every other law can be viewed under this lens.
It is as if people live in a lie, they do not understand what has taken place in the past 200 years, the devastating destruction of the environment with pollution worldwide. As for protecting its citizens, what can really be said about this other than: ignorance is bliss.
>Agriculture has always been influenced by the actions of governments around the world. Never has this been more evident than during the first half of the 20th century, when two major wars profoundly disrupted food production. In response to the tumultuous economic climate, European countries implemented tariffs and other measures to protect local agriculture. ---Rasmussen, Wayne D. , Mellanby, Kenneth , Nair, Kusum , Gray, Alic William , Ordish, George , Crawford, Gary W. and Fussell, George Edwin. "origins of agriculture". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/agriculture. Accessed 30 October 2024.
> oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre
I, for one, enjoy having strict safety requirements for consumer products. I'm also glad to share this endeavour with many similar countries, since it would be wasteful and unfeasible for small nations otherwise.
Don't know why you're downvoted. In both the EPA and the USDA scientists only play a consultant role. Their advice has no teeth. No actual power on the final decisions made by the organizations. Industry representatives are "in the room where it happens" much more so than scientists
> Effective Aug. 7, DCPA may not be sold, distributed or used in any manner. Consumers with current stocks of the product cannot use it.
This probably means we got a huge increase in DCPA usage. In the 1970s when they found out Di-bromochloropropane made most workers infertile and caused extremely high rates of birth defects for those that were still fertile, it was banned immediately in the US. Companies that had large stockpiles of the chemical simply sold them to banana republics. This caused an epidemic of infertility and birth defects in many countries in South America and it still an ongoing concern:
More generally, from a public policy perspective, how do we tax product externalities, not merely population health impact of product use, but additionally the environmental impact, inclusive of production and disposal, wherever those costs may be incurred across the globe.
The easily agreed upon stuff is done?? Gasoline is taxed enough to remove its carbon afterwards? Coal carries an environmental surcharge? Methane leaks are fined? The really obvious stuff is done?? Where?
How do you calculate the balance of positive an negative externalities? I think this is the sticking point. You could put a price on the negative externality from gasoline carbon. How does that compare to the positive value people get from goods shipped with that gasoline: consumer satisfaction, jobs, ect.
If we look at all the externalities, should we be subsidizing it or taxing it? This is the challenge with adjusting for externalities.
The positive value is from goods shipped. It's not from goods shipped with gasoline. That's why you tax the gasoline, and not the shipping. Shipping companies will move to EV trucks or synthetic gasoline or hydrogen or carbon credits or whatever and goods will still be shipped, just without the gasoline. At least in the steady state after the market optimizes.
>The positive value is from goods shipped. It's not from goods shipped with gasoline.
When goods & people are shipped with gasoline, it is producing that external value. When I drive to the super market to buy groceries, the grocery store receives 2nd order value (aka externality).
The fact that alternative modes of transportation exist does not negate the fact that the positive externality exists. Externalities are not defined using comparative analysis.
Lets say you move to EVs or whatever, those too will have externalities. The composition of those externalities may be different than gasoline, as factors are internalized and excluded to the costs paid.
You actually think those things were "easily agreed upon"? They most certainly are not!
I'll give you a tiny example:
> Gasoline is taxed enough to remove its carbon afterwards?
Gasoline is the entire reason we have an economy, do anything to make it more expensive and you'll unleash an earthquake of inflation and lower productivity. That's like the last thing you want to tax!
Note: it's irrelevant if you agree with the argument, (or even if I agree with it) - the issue is that the argument exists.
Yes, I believe it is irrefutable that burning fossil fuels is continuing to degrade the environment. We can look at it. Silver did not used to tarnish! (It reacts with atmospheric sulfur released from burning coal.) Look at the AQI in any city — it’s wrecked. Compare highway versus 500 meters away. Burning gasoline and coal are toxic and disruptive to health.
But we can’t tax them because then… people would use them less. Yes, that is the point.
So basically you just completely skipped what I said and replied to something I didn't say?
The topic at hand is not the existence of global warming, the topic at hand is what to do about it.
> Yes, that is the point.
Try this exercise: Write an argument against taxing it. A good argument. If you can't do it, then you are unable to understand the topic and I don't know how to reply to you.
Because, I think, the cost is incredibly hard to estimate.
First off, when a birth defect does happen how can you even be sure Substance X caused it? Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.
Secondly, how do you go about tracking that? Certainly we don't have a big database for the genome of every baby born.
Third, what about substances that don't do acute harm, like lead? Lead poisoning is slow and deteriorates your mind. We know about it now, but for hypothetical new substance X how do we measure who got the poisoning and how much they have (do we take measurements every few years and plot a graph, adjusting the cost over time?)
Fourth, how do we measure esoteric costs? For example this substance causes loss of intelligence. That could translate into lower paying jobs over a lifetime - could. Do we compare average intelligence income to the income of these individuals and then the difference is the cost? What if some of the individuals could have been geniuses, how do we tell? In general, how do we measure against things that have not happened in our reality?
Should heroin merely be priced higher, not banned, because of the harm it causes to society?
Consider that artificial pricing always creates the Cobra Effect: unintended consequences abound that eventually more than undermine the original intent. This is how George Soros legendarily broke the Bank of England - by taking advantage of artificial pricing (in particular, exchange rates).
Furthermore, healthy societies enforce moral lines through criminal and civil law, not merely through fines and price manipulation.
What about goods priced artificially low because they don't capture the cost of externalities? How can we be sure this isn't a case of artificially low prices?
It would incorporate a present value calculation for medical costs, present value of future earnings, work life expectancy, and account for disability-adjusted life years. The marginal price increase would correspond to the hazard ratio adjusted risk of causing harm.
Yes. I feel like I have something to learn from the answers I receive. Especially, why are folks ok with pricing in externalities to some harms, but not others.
GMOs can reduce need for pesticide and insecticide use, reduce water and fertilizer use, increase yields and make produce last longer. Are there any credible studies showing any GMOs in the states to be harmful?
Just a lot of anecdotal stories that people suffering from various forms of food intolerance (gluten intolerance in particular seems to be strongly correlated with GMO grains) can't eat most GMO/non-organic American food, but can eat food from Europe, where GMO foods are banned and regulatory bodies do not allow new things until clinically proven to not be harmful.
More generally, I'm a proponent of the philosophical view that the FDA and EPA should allowlist things, not denylist. A pesticide, GMO technique, additive, dye, preservative, etc. should be proven via clinical trials before being allowed, not allowed by default until proven harmful.
As it is, this allow-by-default makes the US population the test case for everything at once, making causes of harm difficult to trace (as certain vendors are financially incentivized to want them to be). Furthermore, regulators can be bought via lobbyists, preventing things from being banned until long after their harmfulness is well-known.
Wanting to do things better is nice, but it's no excuse for failing to sufficiently test new things in isolation.
> More generally, I'm a proponent of the philosophical view that the FDA and EPA should allowlist things, not denylist. A pesticide, GMO technique, additive, dye, preservative, etc. should be proven via clinical trials before being allowed, not allowed by default until proven harmful.
I agree with this 100%. I believe that it used to be that way in the USA until the burden of proof was shifted by the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, although I am not entirely clear on this.
Disclaimer: each GMO product should be looked at individually, just like each chemical product. When people say all GMOs are good or bad, it's as silly as saying that all chemicals are good or bad.
That aside,
> GMOs can reduce need for pesticide and insecticide use
A funny thing happened on the way to quarterly report. I believe that the most popular GMO product line is Roundup Ready [0], and it does the exact opposite. It allows the creator's cash cow product to be applied more liberally.
What it does is allows for a mass spraying of Roundup rather than targeted sprayings.
If you had to do several targeted sprayings over a growing season vs 1 mass spraying at a critical point, you could end up spraying more. I would think the main selling point is ease of use but economics is going to play into it.
If you have Farmer A who has to buy the seeds and spray + is using more spray vs Farmer B who is using their own seeds and less spray, who is going to make more money?
I would like to see safer herbicides, I doubt we will ever get away from them.
And the rest of the Wiki:
>While the use of Roundup Ready crops has increased the usage of herbicides measured in pounds applied per acre,[9] it has also changed the herbicide use profile away from atrazine, metribuzin, and alachlor[citation needed] which are more likely to be present in run off water.[citation needed]
What we need is some of that supposedly conservative originalism: One justice for every federal circuit, and fixed ratio apportionment for House seats to make districts too small to gerrymander.
It seems to be more accurate. If a fetus is going to be aborted, then the negative affects of this chemical are moot. The affects of the chemical only become a problem if the fetus becomes a baby.
> If a fetus is going to be aborted, then the negative affects of this chemical are moot. The affects of the chemical only become a problem if the fetus becomes a baby.
Without getting into value judgements or supporting a particular position:
I think the GP is implying that when the fetus "becomes a baby" is the 'divisive' part. For some folks think the fetus (zygote, whatever) is a baby/human/person at (e.g.) the moment of conception, while other folks pick a different moment of time for this.
The (philosophical?) question is why should the entity in the uterus sometimes be considered a (unborn) baby, while other times not a human/person/baby but rather just a bunch of cells?
Even if you concede that the fetus is a person (which is a position that some disagree with), that still does not necessarily settle things:
> It is possible, of course, to acknowledge the personhood of the fetus and still defend abortion. Half a century ago the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, conceding that the fetus becomes a person well before birth, famously argued that the personhood of the fetus does not make the mother’s decision to kill it unjust. Killing the fetus is unjust, Thomson argued, only if the mother first agrees to carry it. But this, again, is a philosophical question. Do we owe others only what we agree to owe them?
> Some philosophers, like Thomson, think so, but very many philosophers disagree. If I live alone in the woods and wake one day to find an infant on my doorstep, am I obligated to care for it? Or may I simply step over it and go on about my day, until it dies from exposure and neglect? To think I am obligated in justice to help it, as a great many people (philosophers and non-philosophers alike) do, is to think we owe things to other people simply because they are people. And if we can owe things to other people simply because they are people, then Thomson’s argument falls apart. […]
IMHO this is central question in the abortion debate, and I find it hard to believe it will ever be resolved or 'universally' agreed upon as it involves all kind personal value judgements.
Well sure, there's only really 2 questions that must be answered when evaluating abortion, yet they're almost never discussed. First is what defines a human life. Second is when is it acceptable to take a life.
As an aside, I think the general increase over the past few decades when it comes to society's inability to tolerate general case loss of life and/or limb did a lot more heavy lifting than anyone wants to give credit for when it comes to swinging the political pendulum against abortion.
Arguments about the point of minimum viability, "but it's a human life", etc. resonate a lot less in a world where kids grow up in houses full of second hand smoke, are playing with lawn darts at 10 and drunk driving by 18 and while not considered ideal all that is considered normal.
This is not necessarily true, there are many cases where the mother's immune system can fend for the unborn child, whereas once a child is born, that helping hand is largely gone, outside of what you get with breast milk etc.
Still doesn't make sense. Prenatal and neonatal, especially when breastfeeding, face the same problems with harmful pesticides and other stuff that has been marketed as safe for broad use, until it turned out otherwise.
Maybe the EPA is playing realpolitik here. Fetuses get way more consideration from conservatives, so maybe, after getting shut down a lot recently from the conservative courts, they think this will be more likely to stand if the concern is over a fetus and not a living baby.
What would be an accurate phrase that would not be unnecessarily divisive? Clump of cells? Feteus? Everything is political and divisive nowadays so no matter what you choose it will be wrong.
Oh and “unborn” babies is a weird term for fetus that is a politically loaded term… and is as much logical sense as calling the living “undead” or “unburied”
I'm pro-choice, but labeling terms like 'unborn babies' as 'weird' for being 'politically loaded' feels like an unproductive distraction. You're just adding bait to a divisive debate rather than contributing any real substance to the conversation.
I think you have to watch for such terminology as it fetus is a much better word, otherwise you let reporters sneak in their own personal biases instead of using neutral terminology.
I believe it is politically loaded, but that it doesn't matter here. Certainly I'm not going to bother to call these things out when it's not really the topic.
But, since we're here, I think it's loaded because it implies the fetus will be born. It kind of gives the impressions that a fetus is equivalent to a baby given enough time, hence they are unborn babies. I think that language is inherently anti-choice. It seems nitpicky but these subtle collective consciousness changes result in culture shifts over time.
They are fetuses, the term unborn baby was until recently has been almost exclusively used by anti abortion advocates. Perhaps they are becoming successful at normalizing the terminology.
Great but "infant in the womb" and similar phrases go all the way back to antiquity. If anything, dehumanizing the fetus is a recent invention by pro abortion advocates.
Well in antiquity one could also cast unwanted babies in the river so I prefer debating based on modern standards and terminology.
And a lot of cultures celebrate like the 100th day of life with some ceremony because so many babies died before that in antiquity. Humanizing babies, and I mean actual babies, is also modern. Heck, until recently people could be treated as property so even humanizing humans was a recent turn of events.
Shall we judge things by antiquity standards, is that really smart?
I mean, define recent. Abortion has been protected for many many decades in the US.
Anti-abortion advocacy is rather new, and old-timey at the same time. The arguments more or less haven't changed since the 50s. For the majority of the time since Roe nobody really cared - the American right shifted to other divisive politics. In the past 10 years they shifted back. Not sure why, maybe they felt as a party it was a strategic entry point into the topic of 14th amendment privacy as a whole. Certainly, that seems plausible when individuals such as Justice Thomas have alluded to taking aim at other protections of that nature such as Loving and Obergefell.
The action comes after years of mounting scientific evidence of the dangers posed by exposure to the chemical dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal.
Yet. Just like this chemical. Just like DDT. Just like BPA. Just like PFCs.
Not nearly enough testing is ever done on these things. Everyone is in such a rush to get these things into our environment and our bodies, no regard for higher order effects, which is why this pattern keeps repeating.
>Not nearly enough testing is ever done on these things. Everyone is in such a rush to get these things into our environment and our bodies, no regard for higher order effects, which is why this pattern keep repeating.
It was discovered more than 50 years ago and the evidence for its harm is still "inconclusive". How much more evidence do you need? When does "precautionary principle" become crankiness (eg. vaccine skepticism or cellphones cause cancer)?
I don't have a good enough stat's background for digging deep into the Lancet or IARC citations on Wiki that are the support for IARC's classification of "probably carcinogenic to humans" but the rest of the sub from Wikipedia says that it is low risk.
A glass of the concentrate is where it starts to get worrisome.
The LD50 is somewhere in the 5000 mg/kg range; that's around 250 grams for a 50kg person. For concentrated glyphosate, you're in that ballpark with around a liter of concentrate, depending on the exact dilution.
Great! But the EPA classified DCPA as a "likely carcinogen" 29 years ago. Why does it take 30 years to stop spraying the stuff?
For the EPA, "likely carcinogen" means:
• There is evidence of carcinogenicity in animals. (Multiple, consistent studies)
• The substance is shown to directly or indirectly cause chromosomal damage or mutations in a way that is relevant to humans.
• There are no or limited human studies, they are inconclusive, or otherwise inadequate. ((Note: This is sort of a "Why isn't this classified higher?" factor.)). ((If a substance isn't in widespread use, it is kind of hard to design an ethical human study. I mean, you aren't going to have some of your test subjects drink a bunch of likely carcinogen each morning.))
So this is a a classification for "Let's maybe not go nuts with this stuff, and someone really ought to check this out. And if you plan to ship tons of this stuff you might want to talk to your lawyers and lawsuit judgement mitigation team."
I didn't manage to find an exhaustive list of things the EPA has listed with this, but I found one that included higher risks as well, and in my little warehouse/workshop I identified 8 things at a casual glance that I have in inventory or generate. Proper use of these have minimal exposure to my squishy bits for most of them, and the others a well informed user should know to take adequate precautions. (e.g. "wood dust": wear a respirator)
The US does not currently fund the EPA to commission studies to further investigate likely carcinogens, so they stay on the list for ages.
"Carcinogenic risk estimate for exposure to DCPA, HCB, and dioxin/furans through food were 3.5e-7, and 7e-8, respectively. All of these risk estimates are within the range (zero to 1e-6) generally considered to be negligible by the Agency. Thus, the Agency concludes that DCPA use does not pose a significant excess lifetime cancer risk." [0]
[0] https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/rere...
And now in 2024 they've issued an emergency order...
> Effective Aug. 7, DCPA may not be sold, distributed or used in any manner. Consumers with current stocks of the product cannot use it.
We need to start retesting pesticide safety more often and be more strict. Currently pesticides are only rechecked every 15 years
How about they just recheck when there is data to show their previous decision is wrong?
What's the point of looking at the same data every 15 years?
while i whole heartedly agree, science and testing takes funding and being more strict requires teeth. neither of which is a popular idea with some people.
being more strict would show results, but like above, showing results isn’t a popular idea with some people, they need inefficiencies to point towards.
>Great! But the EPA classified DCPA as a "likely carcinogen" 29 years ago
Is this the same list as the IARC group 2A list, which contains stuff like red meat, hot beverages, and french fries[1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide
Why bring this IARC list up out of the blue? The parent comment mentioned an EPA classification and you brought up a list of IARC classifications. The EPA and IARC frequently disagree on their classifications.
Probably because you don't find a list from the EPA.
The two categories are very similar, they are sort of aimed at the same result but have slightly different criteria. e.g. the EPA considers exposure levels, IARC requires at least some human evidence. So you wouldn't say one is stricter than the other, just different ways of skinning a cat.
Red meat is on IARC 2A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IARC_group_2A. The IARC is an agency of the World Health Organization, so these lists don't impose any obligations on the FDA.
The parent comment's mention of the IARC list is completely irrelevant. IARC doesn't have anything to do with the EPA.
Edit: Prior to it being edited, the comment I responded to here posed the question to the original IARC comment of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it classified as a carcinogen by IARC.
Isn't that their point? If the Chemical in question is a carcinogen, but a weak one categorized the same way as other foods like red meat, then it probably isn't going to get banned.
The parent of their comment seems to be confused by how the EPA and IARC are not related, so I don't think they do have a point. Prior to my comment, the comment you responded to originally posed the question of whether the EPA could ban red meat due to it being on IARCs list, before being stealth edited.
I don't think the point was organizational, that decisions by the IARC must be respected by the EPA, but more common sensical: if a substance is roughly equivalent in risk to food, which is ingested, then it surely can't be more harmful to spray it than it is to eat it. That may not hold in all situations, but it doesn't seem crazy as a general principle.
In this case it doesn't seem to have been due to its carcinogen classification, but due to fetal toxicity.
Birth defects
> DCPA exposure in pregnant women can cause thyroid level changes in their unborn babies. These changes are linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life.
I think an even better question is why private organizations are allowed to spray random chemicals all over the environment without the safety being proven first. This will keep happening with some new alternative substance if the current approach continues.
Right, this is the core problem. We've seen this happen with literal hundreds, if not thousands of substances.
Companies can, and do, develop various new compounds and then immediately start using them. There're only stringent regulations for food and medicine, but the stuff around it isn't protected. In addition, many of these chemicals make it into local water. We've had to set up countless superfund sites to clean it up later.
Our approach of reactionary vs proactive just doesn't work. Typically, these companies don't do safety tests. Sometimes, companies don't even know what exactly goes into their products.
The fundamental divide in approaching regulation between the US and Europe. The US prefers libertarianism and only regulates (if at all) when problems grow so large they cannot be swept under the rug any more, while European countries generally prefer "big governments" that have an obligation to protect every single citizen.
The US may have more innovation and a more powerful economy as a result, but at least we don't have drinking water taps that can be set ablaze because the drinking water is oversaturated with fracking gas.
As a European I find your assessment appalling. The oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre, European governments only protect their big governments. The ban of US pesticides is to stifle American infiltration of EU agriculture, and basically every other law can be viewed under this lens.
It is as if people live in a lie, they do not understand what has taken place in the past 200 years, the devastating destruction of the environment with pollution worldwide. As for protecting its citizens, what can really be said about this other than: ignorance is bliss.
> The ban of US pesticides is to stifle American infiltration of EU agriculture, and basically every other law can be viewed under this lens.
You really really need to cite some sources for this
For my own opinions, if you'd like to hear more, you can just ask me. I will only provide the citation as a one-off...
<https://www.britannica.com/topic/agriculture/Economics-polit...>:
>Agriculture has always been influenced by the actions of governments around the world. Never has this been more evident than during the first half of the 20th century, when two major wars profoundly disrupted food production. In response to the tumultuous economic climate, European countries implemented tariffs and other measures to protect local agriculture. ---Rasmussen, Wayne D. , Mellanby, Kenneth , Nair, Kusum , Gray, Alic William , Ordish, George , Crawford, Gary W. and Fussell, George Edwin. "origins of agriculture". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/agriculture. Accessed 30 October 2024.
This puts it in the context of WW2.
Here's one example where you find the opposite of "protections" at play: in the US you need prescriptions for antibiotics, in EU 7% is without. <https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/sante/newsletter-archives/4487> (their PDF link is broken; one that works is <https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-06/amr_arna_re...> "Antimicrobial resistance and causes of non-prudent use of antibiotics in human medicine in the EU" (2017)) Here's their Figure 2.6 e.g. <https://imgur.com/a/wLfoV7h>.
Or it could be that people don't want to eat poison. You only have to look at the furore over chlorine-washed chicken post-Brexit to see that.
> oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre
I, for one, enjoy having strict safety requirements for consumer products. I'm also glad to share this endeavour with many similar countries, since it would be wasteful and unfeasible for small nations otherwise.
Lobbyists?
Don't know why you're downvoted. In both the EPA and the USDA scientists only play a consultant role. Their advice has no teeth. No actual power on the final decisions made by the organizations. Industry representatives are "in the room where it happens" much more so than scientists
[flagged]
This happened back in August, the real press release is here:
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-emergency-order-...
> Effective Aug. 7, DCPA may not be sold, distributed or used in any manner. Consumers with current stocks of the product cannot use it.
This probably means we got a huge increase in DCPA usage. In the 1970s when they found out Di-bromochloropropane made most workers infertile and caused extremely high rates of birth defects for those that were still fertile, it was banned immediately in the US. Companies that had large stockpiles of the chemical simply sold them to banana republics. This caused an epidemic of infertility and birth defects in many countries in South America and it still an ongoing concern:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-62120058
Maybe the prohibition on selling will prevent these companies from selling DCPA?
More generally, from a public policy perspective, how do we tax product externalities, not merely population health impact of product use, but additionally the environmental impact, inclusive of production and disposal, wherever those costs may be incurred across the globe.
That's the easy part. The hard part is agreeing what the externality is in the first place!
"My study shows Foobar to cause Baz." "No, your study is wrong, my study shows it doesn't."
All the easily agreed upon stuff is already done - what's left is the stuff people argue about.
The easily agreed upon stuff is done?? Gasoline is taxed enough to remove its carbon afterwards? Coal carries an environmental surcharge? Methane leaks are fined? The really obvious stuff is done?? Where?
How do you calculate the balance of positive an negative externalities? I think this is the sticking point. You could put a price on the negative externality from gasoline carbon. How does that compare to the positive value people get from goods shipped with that gasoline: consumer satisfaction, jobs, ect.
If we look at all the externalities, should we be subsidizing it or taxing it? This is the challenge with adjusting for externalities.
The positive value is from goods shipped. It's not from goods shipped with gasoline. That's why you tax the gasoline, and not the shipping. Shipping companies will move to EV trucks or synthetic gasoline or hydrogen or carbon credits or whatever and goods will still be shipped, just without the gasoline. At least in the steady state after the market optimizes.
>The positive value is from goods shipped. It's not from goods shipped with gasoline.
When goods & people are shipped with gasoline, it is producing that external value. When I drive to the super market to buy groceries, the grocery store receives 2nd order value (aka externality).
The fact that alternative modes of transportation exist does not negate the fact that the positive externality exists. Externalities are not defined using comparative analysis.
Lets say you move to EVs or whatever, those too will have externalities. The composition of those externalities may be different than gasoline, as factors are internalized and excluded to the costs paid.
And BP says they will pay to clean up their mess. But then spends the next two decades suing to not pay
You actually think those things were "easily agreed upon"? They most certainly are not!
I'll give you a tiny example:
> Gasoline is taxed enough to remove its carbon afterwards?
Gasoline is the entire reason we have an economy, do anything to make it more expensive and you'll unleash an earthquake of inflation and lower productivity. That's like the last thing you want to tax!
Note: it's irrelevant if you agree with the argument, (or even if I agree with it) - the issue is that the argument exists.
Yes, I believe it is irrefutable that burning fossil fuels is continuing to degrade the environment. We can look at it. Silver did not used to tarnish! (It reacts with atmospheric sulfur released from burning coal.) Look at the AQI in any city — it’s wrecked. Compare highway versus 500 meters away. Burning gasoline and coal are toxic and disruptive to health.
But we can’t tax them because then… people would use them less. Yes, that is the point.
So basically you just completely skipped what I said and replied to something I didn't say?
The topic at hand is not the existence of global warming, the topic at hand is what to do about it.
> Yes, that is the point.
Try this exercise: Write an argument against taxing it. A good argument. If you can't do it, then you are unable to understand the topic and I don't know how to reply to you.
15 years after the EU.
And the EU still has work to do:
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/other/proven-child-of-florist...
Why can't harm to the unborn simply be priced in so it's no longer an externality?
Because, I think, the cost is incredibly hard to estimate.
First off, when a birth defect does happen how can you even be sure Substance X caused it? Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.
Secondly, how do you go about tracking that? Certainly we don't have a big database for the genome of every baby born.
Third, what about substances that don't do acute harm, like lead? Lead poisoning is slow and deteriorates your mind. We know about it now, but for hypothetical new substance X how do we measure who got the poisoning and how much they have (do we take measurements every few years and plot a graph, adjusting the cost over time?)
Fourth, how do we measure esoteric costs? For example this substance causes loss of intelligence. That could translate into lower paying jobs over a lifetime - could. Do we compare average intelligence income to the income of these individuals and then the difference is the cost? What if some of the individuals could have been geniuses, how do we tell? In general, how do we measure against things that have not happened in our reality?
because at some point it is no longer an economic question, but a moral one.
How much would I need to reimburse you for giving you Down syndrome, for example
Usually we answer questions about prices using markets. Markets are a great way at determining exactly how much something costs
Should heroin merely be priced higher, not banned, because of the harm it causes to society?
Consider that artificial pricing always creates the Cobra Effect: unintended consequences abound that eventually more than undermine the original intent. This is how George Soros legendarily broke the Bank of England - by taking advantage of artificial pricing (in particular, exchange rates).
Furthermore, healthy societies enforce moral lines through criminal and civil law, not merely through fines and price manipulation.
What about goods priced artificially low because they don't capture the cost of externalities? How can we be sure this isn't a case of artificially low prices?
How would you price it?
It would incorporate a present value calculation for medical costs, present value of future earnings, work life expectancy, and account for disability-adjusted life years. The marginal price increase would correspond to the hazard ratio adjusted risk of causing harm.
I agree this is a good idea. Actuaries do calculations/models like these all the time. We shouldn't limit ourselves by our imagination
I don't see the emotional devastation in that, but those are real costs.
Because that reduces the value transferred to shareholders.
Is this a serious question?
Yes. I feel like I have something to learn from the answers I receive. Especially, why are folks ok with pricing in externalities to some harms, but not others.
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GMOs can reduce need for pesticide and insecticide use, reduce water and fertilizer use, increase yields and make produce last longer. Are there any credible studies showing any GMOs in the states to be harmful?
Just a lot of anecdotal stories that people suffering from various forms of food intolerance (gluten intolerance in particular seems to be strongly correlated with GMO grains) can't eat most GMO/non-organic American food, but can eat food from Europe, where GMO foods are banned and regulatory bodies do not allow new things until clinically proven to not be harmful.
More generally, I'm a proponent of the philosophical view that the FDA and EPA should allowlist things, not denylist. A pesticide, GMO technique, additive, dye, preservative, etc. should be proven via clinical trials before being allowed, not allowed by default until proven harmful.
As it is, this allow-by-default makes the US population the test case for everything at once, making causes of harm difficult to trace (as certain vendors are financially incentivized to want them to be). Furthermore, regulators can be bought via lobbyists, preventing things from being banned until long after their harmfulness is well-known.
Wanting to do things better is nice, but it's no excuse for failing to sufficiently test new things in isolation.
> More generally, I'm a proponent of the philosophical view that the FDA and EPA should allowlist things, not denylist. A pesticide, GMO technique, additive, dye, preservative, etc. should be proven via clinical trials before being allowed, not allowed by default until proven harmful.
I agree with this 100%. I believe that it used to be that way in the USA until the burden of proof was shifted by the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, although I am not entirely clear on this.
Disclaimer: each GMO product should be looked at individually, just like each chemical product. When people say all GMOs are good or bad, it's as silly as saying that all chemicals are good or bad.
That aside,
> GMOs can reduce need for pesticide and insecticide use
A funny thing happened on the way to quarterly report. I believe that the most popular GMO product line is Roundup Ready [0], and it does the exact opposite. It allows the creator's cash cow product to be applied more liberally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
What it does is allows for a mass spraying of Roundup rather than targeted sprayings.
If you had to do several targeted sprayings over a growing season vs 1 mass spraying at a critical point, you could end up spraying more. I would think the main selling point is ease of use but economics is going to play into it.
If you have Farmer A who has to buy the seeds and spray + is using more spray vs Farmer B who is using their own seeds and less spray, who is going to make more money?
From the wiki:
> While the use of Roundup Ready crops has increased the usage of herbicides measured in pounds applied per acre ...
I would like to see safer herbicides, I doubt we will ever get away from them. And the rest of the Wiki: >While the use of Roundup Ready crops has increased the usage of herbicides measured in pounds applied per acre,[9] it has also changed the herbicide use profile away from atrazine, metribuzin, and alachlor[citation needed] which are more likely to be present in run off water.[citation needed]
So Roundup usage has increased but other herbicide usage decreased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine Banned in EU, may cause cancer, causes Birth Defects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metribuzin No info on Wiki about toxicity, only groundwater contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alachlor Banned in EU, no current products in US. Multiple Organ damage + Cancer
So should we go back to using more of stuff that we know is very bad or use the less bad stuff until we get even better less bad?
No herbicide is risking crop failure and starvation.
Sure, but they should be looked at by the producer first before widespread selling.
Either that or just have some blanket warning on them that the product wasn't tested for safety.
Great callout. Roundup Ready is my primary GMO concern for US-grown food -- so much so that "GMO bad" and "roundup ready" are synonymous for me.
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Next several years could possibly be devastating to the EPA and consequently the environment.
What we need is some of that supposedly conservative originalism: One justice for every federal circuit, and fixed ratio apportionment for House seats to make districts too small to gerrymander.
It's too bad some politicians get appointed for life.
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It seems to be more accurate. If a fetus is going to be aborted, then the negative affects of this chemical are moot. The affects of the chemical only become a problem if the fetus becomes a baby.
> If a fetus is going to be aborted, then the negative affects of this chemical are moot. The affects of the chemical only become a problem if the fetus becomes a baby.
Without getting into value judgements or supporting a particular position:
I think the GP is implying that when the fetus "becomes a baby" is the 'divisive' part. For some folks think the fetus (zygote, whatever) is a baby/human/person at (e.g.) the moment of conception, while other folks pick a different moment of time for this.
The (philosophical?) question is why should the entity in the uterus sometimes be considered a (unborn) baby, while other times not a human/person/baby but rather just a bunch of cells?
Even if you concede that the fetus is a person (which is a position that some disagree with), that still does not necessarily settle things:
> It is possible, of course, to acknowledge the personhood of the fetus and still defend abortion. Half a century ago the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, conceding that the fetus becomes a person well before birth, famously argued that the personhood of the fetus does not make the mother’s decision to kill it unjust. Killing the fetus is unjust, Thomson argued, only if the mother first agrees to carry it. But this, again, is a philosophical question. Do we owe others only what we agree to owe them?
> Some philosophers, like Thomson, think so, but very many philosophers disagree. If I live alone in the woods and wake one day to find an infant on my doorstep, am I obligated to care for it? Or may I simply step over it and go on about my day, until it dies from exposure and neglect? To think I am obligated in justice to help it, as a great many people (philosophers and non-philosophers alike) do, is to think we owe things to other people simply because they are people. And if we can owe things to other people simply because they are people, then Thomson’s argument falls apart. […]
* https://archive.is/https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commen...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Jarvis_Thomson
IMHO this is central question in the abortion debate, and I find it hard to believe it will ever be resolved or 'universally' agreed upon as it involves all kind personal value judgements.
Well sure, there's only really 2 questions that must be answered when evaluating abortion, yet they're almost never discussed. First is what defines a human life. Second is when is it acceptable to take a life.
>Second is when is it acceptable to take a life.
As an aside, I think the general increase over the past few decades when it comes to society's inability to tolerate general case loss of life and/or limb did a lot more heavy lifting than anyone wants to give credit for when it comes to swinging the political pendulum against abortion.
Arguments about the point of minimum viability, "but it's a human life", etc. resonate a lot less in a world where kids grow up in houses full of second hand smoke, are playing with lawn darts at 10 and drunk driving by 18 and while not considered ideal all that is considered normal.
He meant unborn vs born.
The earlier the exposure, the worse the effects
This is not necessarily true, there are many cases where the mother's immune system can fend for the unborn child, whereas once a child is born, that helping hand is largely gone, outside of what you get with breast milk etc.
Still doesn't make sense. Prenatal and neonatal, especially when breastfeeding, face the same problems with harmful pesticides and other stuff that has been marketed as safe for broad use, until it turned out otherwise.
unborn vs born
Maybe the EPA is playing realpolitik here. Fetuses get way more consideration from conservatives, so maybe, after getting shut down a lot recently from the conservative courts, they think this will be more likely to stand if the concern is over a fetus and not a living baby.
Obligatory George Carlin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZdRMBTF-hQ
What would be an accurate phrase that would not be unnecessarily divisive? Clump of cells? Feteus? Everything is political and divisive nowadays so no matter what you choose it will be wrong.
Good.
Oh and “unborn” babies is a weird term for fetus that is a politically loaded term… and is as much logical sense as calling the living “undead” or “unburied”
I'm pro-choice, but labeling terms like 'unborn babies' as 'weird' for being 'politically loaded' feels like an unproductive distraction. You're just adding bait to a divisive debate rather than contributing any real substance to the conversation.
It’s divisive to not want loaded language that is almost exclusively used by anti-abortion advocates rather than the general terminology?
Using the divisive terminology is what’s divisive, not the comment complaining about the divisive language
I think you have to watch for such terminology as it fetus is a much better word, otherwise you let reporters sneak in their own personal biases instead of using neutral terminology.
I believe it is politically loaded, but that it doesn't matter here. Certainly I'm not going to bother to call these things out when it's not really the topic.
But, since we're here, I think it's loaded because it implies the fetus will be born. It kind of gives the impressions that a fetus is equivalent to a baby given enough time, hence they are unborn babies. I think that language is inherently anti-choice. It seems nitpicky but these subtle collective consciousness changes result in culture shifts over time.
Its literally what they are, they're not aliens, they're people.
They are fetuses, the term unborn baby was until recently has been almost exclusively used by anti abortion advocates. Perhaps they are becoming successful at normalizing the terminology.
Great but "infant in the womb" and similar phrases go all the way back to antiquity. If anything, dehumanizing the fetus is a recent invention by pro abortion advocates.
Well in antiquity one could also cast unwanted babies in the river so I prefer debating based on modern standards and terminology.
And a lot of cultures celebrate like the 100th day of life with some ceremony because so many babies died before that in antiquity. Humanizing babies, and I mean actual babies, is also modern. Heck, until recently people could be treated as property so even humanizing humans was a recent turn of events.
Shall we judge things by antiquity standards, is that really smart?
I mean, define recent. Abortion has been protected for many many decades in the US.
Anti-abortion advocacy is rather new, and old-timey at the same time. The arguments more or less haven't changed since the 50s. For the majority of the time since Roe nobody really cared - the American right shifted to other divisive politics. In the past 10 years they shifted back. Not sure why, maybe they felt as a party it was a strategic entry point into the topic of 14th amendment privacy as a whole. Certainly, that seems plausible when individuals such as Justice Thomas have alluded to taking aim at other protections of that nature such as Loving and Obergefell.
The action comes after years of mounting scientific evidence of the dangers posed by exposure to the chemical dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal.
Great, now do Glyphosate.
Glyphosphate is no where near comparable to this chemical though
Yet. Just like this chemical. Just like DDT. Just like BPA. Just like PFCs.
Not nearly enough testing is ever done on these things. Everyone is in such a rush to get these things into our environment and our bodies, no regard for higher order effects, which is why this pattern keeps repeating.
>Not nearly enough testing is ever done on these things. Everyone is in such a rush to get these things into our environment and our bodies, no regard for higher order effects, which is why this pattern keep repeating.
It was discovered more than 50 years ago and the evidence for its harm is still "inconclusive". How much more evidence do you need? When does "precautionary principle" become crankiness (eg. vaccine skepticism or cellphones cause cancer)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Toxicity
I don't have a good enough stat's background for digging deep into the Lancet or IARC citations on Wiki that are the support for IARC's classification of "probably carcinogenic to humans" but the rest of the sub from Wikipedia says that it is low risk.
DDT is still legal, its just banned for agriculture, you can use it as a pesticide.
> [1] in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
Glyphosate is not toxic. But the stuff in the bottle is mixed with adjuvants and surfactants - and those are toxic.
So you have to distinguish which thing is being studied if you want to research this product.
A 2019 meta-analysis found compelling evidence for a link between Glyphosate-based herbicides and non-Hodgkin lymphoma
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/
nit: Isn't it spelled glyphosate?
It is, I was copy-pasting from someone else and didn't notice.
Nah, you can totally drink a big glass of that.
A glass of the concentrate is where it starts to get worrisome.
The LD50 is somewhere in the 5000 mg/kg range; that's around 250 grams for a 50kg person. For concentrated glyphosate, you're in that ballpark with around a liter of concentrate, depending on the exact dilution.
I was trying to reference this famous video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA
You can also drink a big glass of car engine coolant.
You can drink a big glass of nearly anything once.
It's actually true: Propylene glycol is harmless.
Although some use Ethylene glycol, don't drink that.
Something tells me we're not spraying en masse fields with veggies with engine coolants, are we.
Sounds like your car is in better condition than mine.