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Comment by mikeatlas | Hacker News Reader

They're certainly worth tarnishing. Knowledge of PFOA and PFAS is not without science and evidence of it's harm already established. Here are two sites where the chemicals have contaminated groundwater and caused illness in communities.

http://healthvermont.gov/response/environmental/pfoa-drinkin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/nyregion/military-base-co...

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The first link shows contaminated well water at very high concentrations. That's bad.

The second link mentions more contaminated water supply, and mentions cancer.

I am asking if anybody can directly demonstrate that using this in food liner has an even detectable rate of harm.

If it doesn't then there is no reasonable basis, just fear, to remove the chemicals from the liners.

Could there be harm from removing these particular chemicals?

If not, isn't the precautionary principle good?

I guess this highlights how poor humans are at identifying and thinking about risk.

removing the chemicals would make the food liners not work anymore. then the people who make the liners will find something else. It's not clear there is anything else that works as well, or is as safe.

in this case it's almost certainly true that food liners do not contribute enough of the toxin to have an effect- below a certain dosage the body simply mops up all the toxin and there is no cumulative harm. On the other hand where people are exposed to massive amounts, they develop obvious and clear health problems.

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