EPA is now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing (2018) | Hacker News Reader

EPA is now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing (2018)

archpaper.com

33 pointsGeekette17 comments

Big discussion from August 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17706551

I am speechless. I can somehow forgive the 60ies and 70ies, when awareness of the long term effects of certain substances and technologies just started to build up. It took us long enough to deal with the damages done in those times, there are still buildings which have to be decontaminated from asbestos and other harmfull stuff. The ozone layer also is just barely recovering thanks to the ban of the responsible chemicals.

I also can understand, that banning a substance takes a while for establishing good alternatives. But once a harmful substance is finally removed from the production chain, why would one want to bring it back, knowing exactly what this is?

I wondered why there's no safe synthetic substitute for asbestos so I looked it up.

There's a material from the 70s called Zetex made out of fiberglass that's specifically designed to replace asbestos but I've never heard of it until now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zetex_(fabric)

It probably hurts profit margins, so as far as business are concerned it's unsafe to them.

It's hard to tell what the exact effects will be but it sounds like the final rule was more restrictive?

Also this should have [2018] added.

https://archpaper.com/2019/04/epa-issues-its-final-asbestos-...

How can asbestos be legal and cannibis not?

Why. Just why. This is so stupid. It's taken decades to make progress on current abatement efforts. This is only going to make more people sick with cancer for decades to come. As the article mentions, it's been completely banned in other countries for since the 1970s. Many alternatives for it's various uses exist. There is literally no need for this.

You can't "make america great again" unless you regress.

There was never any intention to make America great. It was just a phrase used because it's what people wanted to hear and they ate it up.

(that's the joke)

>You can't "make america great again" unless you regress.

That is actually one of the fundamental features of populism, an attempt to return to a former (imaginary and fictitous) "golden age" whose promise has been stolen and corrupted by scapegoats and enemies (in the case of Trumpism, those being progressives, environmentalists and immigrants.)

Right. This definitely feels like a 1 step forward, two steps back deal.

Side note: Its all the more hilarious that Trump's face, encircled in Russian, is now plastered over the cancer-inducing asbestos pallets.

> As The Post covered, Trump has long been vocal about his skepticism about the harmful effects of asbestos, claiming in his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, that anti-asbestos efforts were “led by the mob.”

Conspiracy theories are a helluva drug.

Tbf it's my understanding that at one point in NYC all asbestos removal was controlled by the mafia, but obviously Trump completely misunderstood the issue and repeated whatever stupid nonsense came up in his head.

Why? Because once Trump took office, the people heading the EPA have all been replaced with people that are actively against the environment, ecosystem, climate change, and are very pro big business.

Trump has disdain for the EPA, and one reason why Scott Pruitt was chosen was because of his disdain for asbestos regulation.

> During Pruitt’s confirmation hearings, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey asked Pruitt whether he would allow the EPA to ban asbestos. Pruitt responded evasively, saying he would seek the “input of a wide range of stakeholders to ensure sound and inclusive rulemaking and not to produce or dismiss comments from one particular entity.

https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/deregulating-safe...

As for the larger picture of why republicans are going this way, this book explains the trends:

"The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump"

https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/deregulating-safe...

It's probably not stupidity, it's corruption. Near the end of the article it makes a note that the largest asbestos mining and export company is Russian and now stamps its products with Donald Trump's face.

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