U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report
reuters.com
reuters.com
PFAS chemicals are widely used for waterproofing fabrics. The industry term is DWR -- Durable Water Repellent. The chemicals are sprayed onto the surface and simply left there to rub off on your hands and face every time you touch them. The chemicals are ubiquitous; nearly every garment marketed as "water resistant" will be covered with them. As of 2019, only one large outdoor clothing company has abandoned PFC-based DWR finishes. I've also noticed more and more furniture advertised with DWR recently.
All of this concern over parts-per-trillion levels in drinking water is like panicking over an untended candle when your house is already on fire.
EDIT:
Also note that the U.S. military regularly dumps tremendous quantities of PFAS chemicals on the ground around dozens of military bases around the country [1]. They use it in fire suppression foam, of which they spray thousands of gallons during regular fire fighting exercises.
There are low-cost and low-toxicity alternatives to PFAS that are fairly well proven to be just as effective in fire suppression foams, but the U.S. military continues to ignore them steadfastly.
1 - https://theintercept.com/2018/02/10/firefighting-foam-afff-p...
EDIT 2:
Don't forget carpeting! For decades, rugs and carpeting advertised as "stain repellent" have been coated with PFCs. One prominent brand is 3M's Scotchgard, which is also sold as a liquid for people to spray on all their shit. Until 2003, liquid Scotchgard contained PFOS, a C8-class PFC that is now banned. Even today, Scotchgard and other similar products still contain PFCs -- merely shorter-chain versions that have been surmised (but not proven) to be safer.
https://grist.org/article/chipotle-sweetgreen-bowl-compost-p...
Ensuring that process is in place is the hard part. My city doesn't do commercial composting, so partially composted cups are ending up in gardens that were labelled "compostable", but had fine-print on the bottom explaining that it's only compostable in a commercial process.
What we found was that certain items just never broke down, like certain tea bags that have what looks like a plastic tetrahedron instead of a filter-paper bag. The bags end up getting scattered about by our chickens, and eventually picked up and thrown away by ourselves. So, we don't buy those any more.
Here's a link that talks about makers of outdoor gear and their relationship with DWR. http://www.detox-outdoor.org/
It doesn't look like there is a lot of choice. Maybe I'll just stay wet :)
I'm surprised to see Patagonia in the worst of that site's categories, considering their stance on sustainability.
Wikipedia seems to agree about the outer, and only notes a decline in breathability in newer fabric by using a PU layer in place of teflon bonded to fabric found on the earliest.
Lots of apparel products are highly overrated. And those water resistant coatings just come off anyway.
I think the best thing to do is go on a hike near a river with a dog, and watch how the dog marches through the water unwaveringly even when it’s cold!
In the US legal system we follow innocent until proven guilty for some very valid reasons - but at some point the public consciousness accepted this for regulations as well and harmless until proven harmful is extremely dangerous. New chemical products shouldn't be shrugged off until studies have proven them harmless, instead the onus should be on them to proven themselves harmless before being usable - especially chemicals that can be ingested indirectly by being included in things like pipe liners, shower products, utensil and cookware coatings, jars, adulterated cans and drinking vessels.
I recall growing up in Tahoe, we would spray the heck out of all our winter wear with Scotch Guard (Teflon) and even breath in its fumes...
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/
[1] https://www.netflix.com/search?q=the%20devil%20we%20know&jbv...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Devil-We-Know-Bucky-Bailey/dp/B07H7XJ...
Which one?
- Nikwax (all products) - Sciessent Curb
Yes, it would be nice if REI and other companies that sells lots of these garments could apply pressure with "PFC free" filters / sections.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191221153531/https://www.theat...
Prior to it's synthesis there are centuries of use of stick pans without much issue.
The burden for passing laws outlawing particular products is supposed to be higher than the burden to bring those products to market in the first place.
[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/human/chemicals/emerging-ch...
[2] https://greensciencepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/An...
Not far from my living area a new gas rig started operating where the gov, contractor company and EPA (EPA of my country that is) argue the chemical emissions doesn't pose health risks (same for sea water pollution risk), while self-funded environmental organizations argue otherwise and show inconsistencies and omissions of real-time data in air monitoring stations. They compare the owners' claims with their assertions.
The interesting story is about trust crisis in the system. The public reached a point where they started crowd-funding independent air monitoring system to put pressure on EPA to "do its job" and enforce the standards. EPA already announced a nice mobile app showing monitored air data on the map to provide public sense of security. I hope the data is genuine.
There are more and more examples of crowd-funded projects as alternatives to governmental components expressing decline of public trust.
It seem to happen globally on many levels. Is it possible the crowd-funded organizations will one day replace the government?
Electronics safety is assured by UL, a private company. To date, they've maintained the public's trust in their services.
If Consumer Reports publishes an exposé of UL taking kickbacks to certify substandard equipment, I'd become very interested in buying gear certified by a competitor.
With the EPA, I mean... I can't vote out the leadership of the EPA. I can very indirectly vote for a change there, and hope it happens, if that vote happens to align with my other interest, but there's no granularity, no way to hit them in their pocketbook, which I line once a year regardless of my feelings on the matter.
Now, there are some immediate differences between the two, which are obvious enough that I'm not going to bother elucidating them. But it's an instructive comparison. I'd say the UL model is underutilized.
UL’s main competitor is ETL. I can tell you that you very much should prefer products tested by UL. I work for a company that makes wire and it’s widely know inside our industry that ETL does nothing to ensure that products being sold with their mark are products they actually tested. There are lots of issues with UL’s enforcement of their mark, but ETL just doesn’t care at all.
Regardless, just because UL seems to be doing a decent job (I'm not really qualified to comment on that, just going on an assumption here), there have been other industry groups that were supposed to do the same thing and were basically utter failures. For example, the EnergyStar organization giving certification for a gasoline powered alarm clock[0].
[0] https://gizmodo.com/a-fake-gas-powered-alarm-clock-once-got-...
Huh! TIL.
UL, a private company, can only exist because they charge manufacturers of electronics for their certification.
No one is manufacturing the air we breathe (at least not yet...) so there is no revenue source for this kind of testing outside of public funding.
Your whole comment is a classic example of attempting to apply market forces to a problem that has no market.
I'll be blunt - Capitalism is a nifty trick for situations where there's a market and low barrier to entry. IT IS NOT A SILVER BULLET.
I don’t think the issue is so much “markets vs govt” as it is accountability vs impunity. The issue with single-payer, nationalized air protection is that there’s a single point of failure and there’s no reasonable means of individual dissent (pulling funding, voting with one’s feet, etc).
Of course this line of thinking leads to some very politically incorrect conclusions.
I've been thinking a lot lately about starting a company that focuses on improving water quality, working with waste water treatment, and working on CO2. Going forward I think this problem will continue to get worse and there needs to be companies that are trying to solve these issues.
Now the Fox River has a base layer of PCB's and all the papermills declared bankruptcy or dissolved so as not to foot the bill for cleanup.
Here's an enlightening read: (warning: it's long)
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-b...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/
EDIT: Spelling.
Edit: apparently there was a movie recently released about it, that I had never heard of until I reached this thread. I still think a TV series is the best way to approach this sort of topic as you have more hours to sink into the details.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...
They can be absorbed through the skin so if you really want to avoid them you need a whole house filter.
The WHO stated that demineralized water is unsuitable for long term drinking due to the lack of minerals.
Not sure how significant this is or how many minerals you can get from diet instead of water.
Here's one that's quite popular: https://www.theperfectwater.com/Home-Master-hydroperfection-...
The flow rate & pressure is typically very low for the drain water with these systems, so you'd need another setup to handle pumping it to your toilet, etc.
Sending it outside is probably the easiest way to immediately use it.
proper inlet pressure also improves efficiency.
If that number is "far too low", everyone is probably affected. And probably not just in the US, they just tested for it.
Sounds like PCBs 2.0.
In 2018 a draft report from an office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the risk level for exposure to the chemicals should be up to 10 times lower than the 70 PPT threshold the EPA recommends.
The article is all over the place with various recommendations. Seems to boil down (no pun intended) to:
* EPA recommends less than 70 parts per trillion
* US Department of Health and Human Services recommends less than 7 parts per trillion.
* EWG recommends less than 1 part per trillion and states in their report that only 3 out of 44 sites they tested met that much more stringent standard.
I moved into a new house last year near 2 closed down USAF military bases (known to have been previously contaminated by firefighter foam) and did a ton of research on the issue since the house water comes from a well (free water!). I ended up getting a professional water filtration system installed in our basement (carbon tanks, UV light filter, reverse osmosis). Cost me $5k+ for install and ~$1500 year to swap out the tanks and service the system. It's pricey, but you can't put a price on clean water.
Is that... is that not exactly what you just did? $5k capital expense and $1500/yr operational expense.
That system is almost certainly more than enough for your own household needs, so you could probably sell the excess capacity to your neighbors at near cost to cover some of the operational expenses.
But possibly not. Water rights in legal-land aren't always as fair or uncomplicated as ordinary non-lawyer folk--such as myself and most HN readers--might expect them to be.
I could still be wrong. It was hard to find any good studies or tests last time I looked into it.
https://www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/0,9038,7-365-86510_871...
https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa...
Of course, the coating does not decompose upon composting, it just sits there in the compost.
I'm not arguing, just trying to get my head around it.
(And yes I realize that in some of these areas the concentrations were orders of magnitude higher; the recommendation for allowable concentration is < 1PPT according to the article)
"PFOA is not rapidly eliminated from the human body, with a half-life of 3.8 years in human blood, thus raising the public concerns over the toxicological implications due to internal exposure." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817033/)
That's elimination from retired "fluorochemical production workers" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805419/).
I assume that these compounds aren’t readily excreted from the body, so you’d want a very low limit with the understanding it would accumulate over time?
Just a guess.
This is an actual question: How much do these filters help against the type of contamination that's in US drinking water?
>The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.
All of these chemicals are in common use throughout the developed world. This isn't just a case of evil corporations dumping industrial waste into impoverished children's drinking water, though corporate environmental pollution does play a role. They come from everyday use and wear of common products, and they are incredibly expensive to filter even by centralized plants once they've made it into the water supply through e.g. dish washing, clothes washing, and street runoff. And the issue is that they accumulate over years or possibly decades.
LifeStraw even states
>Chemicals, salt water, heavy metals and viruses will not be removed.
http://help.lifestraw.com/en/articles/2507813-does-the-lifes...
Sawyer states
>Taste
>The Sawyer filter removes taste that comes from bacteria, dirt, and green matter.
>Chemicals
>The Sawyer filter does NOT remove iron, sulfur, other chemicals, or simple compounds. Taste can be masked by using flavor additives like Gatorade or crystal light (filter needs to be cleaned immediately after using them).
>Heavy Metals
>The Sawyer filters are not made with charcoal. While other portable filters have charcoal, they lack in amount of media and adequate dwell time. Therefore, they only remove small amounts of heavy metals, pesticides, etc. (when used in real life applications). Try using better sources of water, if possible.
https://www.seychelle.com/water-filters
> The Radiological filter removes the four basic zones of contamination: aesthetic (chlorine, taste and odor), chemicals (from industry and agriculture), dissolved solids (heavy metals such as lead, mercury, chromium 6) and up to 99.99% of radiological contaminants such as gross beta, radon 222, alpha radium 226, plutonium, uranium, cesium 134 and 137. Removes up to 90% of fluoride. (Not to be used with salt water.)
> The RAD/ADV filter removes up to 99.99% of chlorine, chemicals (VOC’s), heavy metals, radiological contaminants and up to 90% of fluoride. It removes up to 99.9999% of bacteria and viruses, as well as 99.9% of giardia and cryptosporidium. The RAD/ADV filter can be used for emergency preparedness, disaster relief, and radiological contamination. Just like the Advanced filter the RAD/ADV filter is ideal for traveling around the world and used with water of unknown quality. (Not to be used with salt water.)
So there's a chance that these might be able to remove other chemicals and perhaps microplastics.
The Berkey filter also seems to remove quite a few contaminants:
https://www.berkeyfilters.com/pages/filtration-specification...
I wonder if there will be a boom in the water filter industry after more mainstream articles come out about the problem and the government eventually starts recommending them openly.
What about fractional distillation?
That would work but I imagine it's going to have some amount of inefficiency depending on the contaminant, you'd have to do several passes to get to really low trace levels I imagine as you're going to keep some contamination simply by what collects on the walls of the vessel and runs back down.
With some contaminants I imagine you could introduce more chemicals to get a reaction that would make the filtration easier. I imagine some could also be changed sufficiently by heating the sample to a point where you get a chemical change in the contaminant, although, I'm guessing this would be the most 'expensive' method unless energy wasn't an issue (fusion).
Wash the packed column and boiling vessel with the heads and then discard them. Discard the tails. Repeat the process with the mains.
Your twice-distilled mains are now pure water, discounting contamination from inferior distillation apparatus.
Get some food-grade calcium chloride (E509, de-icing salt), magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and potassium chloride (NoSalt brand table salt substitute) and add some (known) minerals back into the result for your drinking water, because pure distilled water has a very poor taste profile.
The only types of chemical that cannot be easily removed by this distillation process are those that form azeotropes with water, such as ethanol, and those chemicals are unlikely to be present in quantities significant enough to be a problem.
>Reverse Osmosis Systems will remove common chemical contaminants (metal ions, aqueous salts), including sodium, chloride, copper, chromium, and lead; may reduce arsenic, fluoride, radium, sulfate, calcium, magnesium, potassium, nitrate, and phosphorous.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/home-water-treatme...
Seems about as close as you can get to completely clean water.
Though as you stated it still doesn't solve root cause.
Plus remineralization isn't as effective as you would think. Most of the minerals removed by RO can't be easily reintroduced as they aren't readily dissolved.
For ex: San Francisco's City Water has Chromium (hexavalent) at 0.0906 ppb, and Total Trihalomethanes (TTHMs) at 38.9 ppb [2]. The "Water Filters That Can Reduce Contaminant Levels" table says Activated Carbon and Ion Exchange filtration can't remove those particles, but Reverse Osmosis can.
This is a weak statistical methodology.
>They are likely representative of the water in the area where the sample was taken...
I don't agree with that.
Quotes from the source: https://www.ewg.org/research/national-pfas-testing/
That said, this is serious problem.
edit: one example, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
Chemical stability isn't necessarily a good thing. Another chemical, Perfluorooctanoic (C8), is used in the manufacture of Teflon and is extremely stable, so much so that it's found in the bloodstream of 98% of Americans. Unfortunately C8 bio-accumulates and is in fact very harmful.
Also, one of the applications of Teflon is cookware and when heated Teflon undergoes thermolysis and forms toxic compounds. So stability is great until it's not.
Speaking of how shitty DuPont is... 3M was DuPont's sole supplier of C8 and stopped manufacturing it amid rising concerns from the EPA, so DuPont started manufacturing it on their own.
and that still won't do anything about commercial or industrial uses of those chemicals that contaminate your water supply/etc. Like firefighting foam, for example. The Air Force is going to keep using it regardless of what you do personally, despite them having less toxic alternatives available.
simply banning it directly wouldn't help, companies will just move on to the next thing, legally it will be presumed to be safe until there is science to prove that it's not, and we will need another 75 years of epidemiological studies to build that proof. Rinse and repeat forever.
The long term answer is that we need to reverse the legal model and have companies prove that any chemical they intend to introduce is safe, rather than the public having to (first learn what proprietary chemicals are being used, as this is not legally required to be disclosed, and then) prove that it's dangerous, but that won't happen under any conservative or liberal governments in the US, it will take a leftist government pushing heavy environmental regulations before there's any chance of phasing this sort of thing out. Until then, it's on to the next poison.
>The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.
Perhaps "capitalism" is a lazy proxy for this but I think it's more lazy to downvote you than engage with the discussion
I don’t see how the production of materials and transportation of the materials and people could not increase pollution, given the current infrastructure which requires use of fossil fuels, and which will not change in the short term.
I agree disposable consumerism is a problem —but that’s not the cause of this. Even historically socialist countries have issues (maybe even more issues) with industrial pollution. Adding “Capitalism” is a distraction from the problem.
The issue is learning from mistakes and taking proper corrective action according to risks.
Assuming the modified ecosystem is worse for basic needs such as water, temperature, and air quality, the only solution in the short term is to reduce consumption. Which is antithetical to every assumption made by every government and their financial system, which require exponential growth to sustain themselves.
I don’t see what socialist or capitalist or democracy or dictatorship has to do with it. If everyone wants a detached house with a garage and yard and personal vehicle to travel with and flights to tropical destinations, then this is the price that will have to be paid (barring a drastic reduction in population that can afford to do that).
Dark Waters is not a documentary.
I think you mean "complete and utter lack of" regulation.
Obviously, the chemical that's in the water that must promote such enterprises has to be reintroduced after any purification processes that may occur in the aforementioned store.
Someone please explain to me how such a business is viable in 5 gallon quantities, when the rest of the world either digs a well, buys the outflow from a metered pipe, or fills up a cistern from a tanker truck with at least 3000 gallons per delivery.
Do they not sell reverse osmosis filters or distillery pots there?
Also, if one person filters out the stable perfluorocarbons like PFOA and PFOS, and then dumps them back down the drain again, is that really helping to solve the problem?
I live on Long Island (New York) and we have water problems from old factories that polluted the ground water.
My water bill will now include $80/year charge for new filtering plants that are supposed to clean up the contaminated water.
At best, the companies should’ve never been allowed to pollute the water. At worst, the cleanup cost should’ve been charged to the polluters immediately.
Instead, they get a subsidy from my neighbors and me while we drink contaminated water.
New York is trying to sue some companies to recover costs [1] but we can never be made whole. I doubt they’ll recover the full cost of the cleanup and I know they’ll never recover the cost to our health.
[1] https://libn.com/2019/12/23/new-york-ready-to-fight-polluter...
This is ideologically biased. You mean "externalize RISK", which governments and NGOs do all the time too.
My comment isn’t addressing an economics class, it’s addressing an electorate.
Nassim Taleb's concept of scale seems to me could be one root cause. The farther away the deciders are to the implications of their decisions, the less accountability they have. The more local and "market based" systems are, the more accountability, or Skin In The Game they have, and therefore more robust the dynamic.
Example: Communism has worked wonderfully at the scale of the family for thousands of years, but has always turned monstrous at the scale of a nation.
I think the here bias is trying to hide with the more general technical term, that in this specific discussion, the third party which assumes the loses is the whole society.
Instead of rather expensive filtering that requires you to buy filter every now and then in recurring cost.
A few years ago, when our local water authority began testing for PFAS, they found unusually high numbers specifically around one well-head used to supply municipal water to the area. Instead of disclosing the issue, the authority chose to use that well head only when the demand was high, which excluded times in which the water was tested. If they timed their testing to times of low demand, the numbers were under the EPA recommendation.
With significant grass-roots pressure in the area, many pending lawsuits, and lots of reporting and investigation, the municipality is taking the issue somewhat seriously. GAC filters were installed on the municipal supply, the company considered largely at fault has agreed to pay for the extension of municipal water to some (not all) affected areas that are still served by well water, in which the danger is particularly high. Some cleanups are occurring, while other sites exist under what are now housing developments.
There's story after story here, of people (especially those located in areas served by well water) with a history of cancer after cancer after cancer affecting their entire families. These are folks who after having their water tested, confirmed some of the highest levels ever measured in a water supply.
In all, the whole ordeal has been a wake up call for me, regarding the level of cover-up that happened and in some cases continues to happen surrounding waste disposal, especially for large companies that are considered the "economic life blood" of a given area. Looking over records, people have found strong objections to the practice dating back to the time it happened (some of the warnings eerily prescient) multiple cleanups that were funded but never occurred in the decades that followed, and a continual failure to acknowledge any risk surrounding the practice and dump sites for decades. There was a constant drum beat of "very smart people say that everything is fine."
As for me, my (municipal) water is GAC and RO filtered. I pay close attention to things I would not have considered before, like air quality. It's made me reconsider the source of the foods that I eat. It takes little work to take these precautions, the potential upside is pretty big, and the downside small.
I wonder if in the years to come, we're going to find significant causal links between aspects of our environment and maladies we previously considered a mystery.
So they're still wrong, fluoride is added to water in very small amounts, but PFOA/PFOS are other unrelated chemical byproducts. They only share the fluoride element.
I have a water filter in my fridge but no real idea how well it works.
I don't see the need to pay for a brand and logo on the filter.
The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests and people would elect people who would represent their interests, all of course with hopeful protections for minorities. Obviously, this doesn't work.
We need to really set expiration dates on how long people can run campaigns and how long they can stay in a given office. Politics should be about solving problems and seeking continuous improvement of well-being for citizens in a given society, not convincing people they're happy, constantly lying, and playing manipulative popularity contests but that's where we are.
Representative democracy, long described as the solution, really isn’t. Representatives are self-interested, just like everyone else, and so we cannot expect them to be purely faithful executors of their respective mandates.
What we did not expect, and perhaps are now beginning to, is that human beings are endlessly resourceful when personally motivated. Laws, norms, and institutions are static structures, simple obstacles for people to overcome when they really want to. It has always been far more difficult to build defences than it has been to build new weapons to overcome them. This is the great challenge for lawmakers, judiciary, law enforcement, and anyone who is interested in the preservation of a free and open society.
That’s irrelevant isn’t it? You elect based on your own self-interest and expect your candidate to follow theirs. There isn’t a single “what’s best for society” anyway so the pull between competing ideas means the most popular ones win. With a tempering effect from the courts.
What we did not expect was political parties. These are in effect conjoining at least the legislative and executive branches.
Also the electoral college ruined things. Not for the trivial reason you may think but by eliminating runoff elections.
Madison claimed that the defense against the tyranny of the majority was that
"...the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.
In a free government the security for civil rights [...] consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects."
It seems that parties, and particularly blind obedience to the head of the party (whether the president, the speaker, etc), has diminished the "number of interests and sects."
(Note, this is my understanding of Madison, but not as a scholar of US history.)
The founding fathers did. They saw how political factions brought about the bloody English civil wars, and many feared they'd tear the new nation apart. But some people like Jefferson saw them as a part of human nature, a necessary evil.
As of our second president (1797) we had a two-party system. But by 1812, the Democratic-Republican party gained control of both Congress and the presidency, and effectively destroyed the Federalist party, giving us effectively one party control of government (the "Era of Good Feelings" in which nationalism flourished in the afterglow of the war of 1812). But in 1830 the new Democratic Party gained control, and we've had two since then.
A lot of people believe that though. They see democracy as the key to discovering this idea and bringing everyone on board with it. I’ve heard this position described as “mistake theory,” in contrast to conflict theory [1]. In other words, for some people the goal of government is to find the right balance of incentives and disincentives.
For others, government will always be a power struggle between mutually incompatible interests. Democracy makes little sense in such a situation.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
People throw a lot of hate towards Citizens United. But the alternative was worse.
I wonder whether the staffers of politicians engage in game theoretic modeling, have red teams etc. to try to anticipate these kinds of exploits.
Seeing California's proposition process, I agree. It also shows how disfunctional representative democracy is.
And that's a good thing.
Who deemed that a problem? The elites wanting specific decisions out of the masses.
Democracy is a problem for 49 percent of people.
Surely you could have figured this one out?
in the US anyway.
But I agree, the US government isn't functioning 1) as originally intended or 2) for the benefit of the majority of the people it 'represents.'
Although it's worth noting that 'as the forefathers intended' carries more weight than it typically should. Their intentions were mostly based on philosophical guess work, as they didn't have a whole lot of empirical data or existing republics/democracies to base their new government on.
It honestly seems like like they intended the US government to function a lot more similarly to the EU than what we currently have. Although the EU has its own sets of problems, but at the very least seems more representative of the people than the US government.
They had plenty of examples to base their design on; democracy had been invented more than a thousand years before the US was formed. Like the vast majority of social institutions though, it was in the end based on fallible guesswork -- people like Thomas Jefferson were explicitly aware of this.
What they could not have planned for was the industrial revolution, corporate proliferation/globalization, the information revolution of today, and the scale of it all.
Right, that was my point. I wasn't suggesting they invented democracy.
American democracy was never meant to benefit just the majority. Which is why we have undemocratic institutions (such as the Judiciary). Minorities (both long-standing and ephemeral -- e.g. a race of people versus the losing party in an election) exist and should be protected from the majority and should be represented in government. Only long-term, widely-held political thoughts can truly dominate minorities in this country.
The fact that power swings from Republicans, back to Democrats, back to Republicans, and so on, illustrates that there is a very weak majority in this country and no consensus opinion on how to move forward.
> Although the EU has its own sets of problems, but at the very least seems more representative of the people than the US government.
From an outsiders perspective many aspects of the EU seem undemocratic and ad-hoc. Can you explain your view of the EU to me?
That only holds true if you believe that the two political parties accurately represent the views of the people.
Political views are a spectrum of opinions. Boiling them down to one of two parties means you lose the majority of views. In the end you vote with the party that most closely resembles your opinions, but because the US has two choices, the party you choose doesn't end up representing your beliefs in a lot of cases. It just represents your beliefs more frequently than the other one.
Indeed, which is why laws should be hard to pass and easy to repeal. The government should not be involved in anything which does not have the support of a clear supermajority. I would personally set the threshold at a minimum of 75-80% support required to enter a new law into the books, and at least 60% to keep it there following a formal challenge. I would also make the challenge automatic after about 20 years to ensure obsolete laws are pruned on a reasonable schedule.
I think it better illustrates how really these parties are mostly the same. As AOC said, the Democratic party is a center conservative party for the most part. Biden and Trump are a lot more similar than people would like to admit. Just look at Biden's comments about video games and you can see how much of a reactionary conservative he actually is.
So far, so good, despite warning signs to the contrary. Spielberg's "Lincoln" is particularly clear about displaying this dynamic at the country's most fractured moment.
Half of congress is now lead by the executive branch, which completely undermines the checks/balances between them, which is the basis on how the government is supposed to be function. Never mind the judicial branch, which also frequently votes on partisan lines.
> Although it's worth noting that 'as the forefathers intended' carries more weight than it typically should. Their intentions were mostly based on philosophical guess work
Until the letter and spirit of the law are ironed out, it's hard to interpret what laws mean, specifically. A lot of rules, like how shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech, are essentially interpretations of what the people who wrote the laws intended when they wrote it.
> It honestly seems like like they intended the US government to function a lot more similarly to the EU than what we currently have
That was, and is, the intent of having states be their own, you know, sovereign states, with their own constitutions, laws, and courts. Unlike the EU, the US has a common language, history, and currency, so centralizing and strengthening a federal government is easier, and has some advantages.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
Not to mention they're just some random people, nation building or not. No rational reason to treat their work like some higher command centuries later.
We treat their work "like some higher command" because it literally is that. Their work (the Constitution) creates a framework that overrides anything enacted by contemporary legislatures. The reason that's so important is because we often (usually?) don't agree on what rules should be. America has large numbers of people who think guns should be banned completely, and also large numbers of people who think teachers should carry firearms. The Constitution is a meta-rule that mediates those disagreements. Of course, to the extent we don't like any particular meta-rule, we could amend it with a 2/3 vote. We don't do that because we don't agree on what the alternative meta-rule should be!
It's entirely rational for everyone to adhere to those meta-rules. Democrats in New York can't just decide to ignore the Second Amendment because once that's out the window, Republicans in Alabama have no reason to respect Roe v. Wade. Everyone tries to interpret the rules to sanction their specific approach, but declaring that we can just decide for ourselves what the rules will be, without reference to the meta-rules, would lead to total breakdown.
I think the "rational reason" over time really is that no one has come up with better ideas.
My theory is that we look at the past through the filter of a lens, and this lens typically only lets the brightest shine through. Like them or not, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin left behind writings that were objectively superior in utility to many of the other founders. If you ever had the misfortune of being obliged to do an analysis of something like the Lincoln-Douglas transcript, you really can see that one set of ideas is so much better thought out than the other. American blacks had numerous leaders, but the reality was that MLK had ideas that were simply objectively superior to many other black american leaders. Throw in the almost Periclean eloquence of most of the guys I highlighted there, and you end up with a bar that's impossibly high to get over. It takes a generational type of steward to meet that kind of a standard.
Which is why, over time, that standard starts to seem like a "higher command".
You can set new standards that are in opposition to the established ones. However, you really would need well thought out ideas. Those ideas would have to grow the segment of people benefiting from the current ideas in a society. Finally, to top all that off, you'd need a steward for those ideas with a fervent commitment to them, an almost Socratic wisdom, and a Periclean eloquence. All these conditions are difficult to meet. In fact, it's only natural that all these conditions will rarely be met simultaneously.
On balance I think this is good. I mean, at the other extreme we'd have the ideas of some user named MonkeyAnal on Youtube being taken as seriously as the ideas of Jefferson. Stability demands Jefferson's ideas carry the weight in that situation. At the same time, it is possible to attack Jefferson's ideas and change the standards he set. You just have to be Lincoln writing to Ripon, and not MonkeyAnal ranting on Youtube. Again, an almost impossibly high bar, I'll grant you that, but at the same time that bar provides certain safeguards.
I disagree, and I think you need to take a look at three sets of poll results to understand why. (For all the poll results, keep in mind that voters skew more conservative than the overall population.)
1) A recent Gallup poll shows that the vast majority of Americans prefer free market to government solutions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/257639/four-americans-embrace-f.... Only in two areas did more people think the government should be primarily responsible: environmental protection, and online privacy. Even for healthcare, 53% though the free market should be primarily responsible, versus 44% for the government.
2) Since 1965, Gallup polling has shown that Americans consistently list "big government" as the "biggest threat facing the country in the future." https://news.gallup.com/poll/201629/americans-big-government...
Aside from a brief dip during 9/11, a majority of the country listed "big government" as the "biggest threat" since the late 1980s. Even during the 2009 recession, "big business" peaked at 32%, and is usually around 25%. In 2012, 72% of Americans listed big government as the biggest threat, and only 21% listed big business.
3) According to a 2014 Reason-Rupe survey, the majority of millennials want a "smaller government with less services and lower taxes." https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/db/140488628178.... See chart on page 47. 57% of millennials want lower taxes and less services, versus 41% who want more taxes and more services.
In short, Americans distrust government, trust businesses, and don't want to pay high taxes. That's pretty much explains why we have the government we do. Half the country (Republicans) doesn't trust the government at all, and will push back on any new government programs or taxes. Out of the other half (Democrats), you've got several factions that are only loosely connected. A large faction comprises wealthier white progressives, for whom issues like gay marriage and abortion
http://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-ca...
In part that's due to the incessant, implacable drumbeat from the you're-not-the-boss-of-me right wing (and their cheering sections in the wealthy and wannabe-wealthy) that government is always the problem and never part of the solution; that if we just leave people alone they'll act virtuously and civically, and so the invisible hand would supposedly take care of everything if we would just let it. Which of course is delusional.
For the first time in history, we have technology that would allow every resident of the US to both receive transmit information more or less instantaneously; such delays as exist are not between our ears, nor do we lack for access to long-term knowledge or choices for how to share it. Vast libraries of knowledge fit in a pocket and participation in national conversations is not merely possible but expected; our every impulse and idea is recorded weighted, traded, and incorporated into a cathedral of civic participation.
At the center of this wondrous contrivance the national rituals are conducted, like psychic engines of historical propulsion whose operation is sacrosanct even as it propels us toward another iceberg, and woe to those who interrupt the comforting rhythms with anxious facts.
Many people aren't voting at all, because they're excluded based on felony convictions, inability to meet paperwork requirements for voter IDs, etc.
Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The electoral college isn't intentional gerrymandering, but it has the same effect as gerrymandering: two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote. And where it's intentional, it's even more effective. In North Carolina, Republicans won 77% of congressional seats with just over 50% of the popular vote in 2018. In Ohio, Republicans won 75% of congressional seats with 52% of the popular vote in 2018.
In most areas, single vote per election systems prevent third parties from being viable. There's some evidence this encourages extremism as well: moderates aren't able to sufficiently differentiate themselves, causing vote splitting.
And after all that, if they're still not able to win unfairly, electioneers can just go into the electronic voting machine and change the votes.
And even if you manage to get the person the majority wanted to be in office into office, there's no guarantee that they'll do what they said they'd do that caused people to vote for them. I know lots of people (myself included) who view being forced to buy health insurance or pay a fine as a major betrayal by Obama.
Choosing not to vote is a vote.
> because they're excluded based on felony convictions, inability to meet paperwork requirements for voter IDs, etc.
Felony disenfranchisement hardly contradicts my point. And anyway, voter suppression and felony disenfranchisement are at all time lows historically, so my point stands just fine.
> Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The electoral college isn't intentional gerrymandering, but it has the same effect as gerrymandering: two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote. And where it's intentional, it's even more effective. In North Carolina, Republicans won 77% of congressional seats with just over 50% of the popular vote in 2018. In Ohio, Republicans won 75% of congressional seats with 52% of the popular vote in 2018.
Sure. My point isn't that our democracy is perfectly implemented. My point is that its current incarnation is its most democratic yet. Until Obama, candidates were basically selected by the fiat of elite groups. Obama, and then Trump, up-ended that system, making our democracy more democratic than it ever has been. For better or worse.
And yes, I am definitely biased.
The "fuck you, got mine" mentality that has developed is what will cause democracy to fail.
That mentality is more or less unique to one large generation in the US, it's not universal and not perpetual.
Also, there have been democracies for more than a thousand years that have withstood this sort of thing.
This doesn’t seem so obvious to me. PFAS is a perfect example. It’s used in literally everything from clothing to food containers, because it’s an engineering marvel. I want my elected official to push back on people who want to jump the gun issuing radically lower guidelines for PFAS unless we have rock solid evidence not only linking them to harm, but quantifying that harm in relation to the benefits they provide. I like my non stick pans and stain resistant clothes and carpets, and as an Asian man who can expect, statistically, to live well into his 80s in the United States, I want a concrete assessment of how much longer I’d be living if we took a different approach to PFAS. And I fully accept that DuPont will have to be the one to tell the government: “hey, we use this stuff in a whole bunch of products people like”—because who else is going to articulate that essential part of the story?
Regulating this stuff is complex. For example, banning leaded gasoline was undoubtedly a win. (Which the EPA did after extensive cost benefit analysis.) By contrast, the dangers of DDT, which was and continues to be banned, probably we overstated: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-n...
That's because it isn't needed.
If the elite can get the same benefits with less harsh methods, why go all dictatorship?
E.g. it's not like free speech by most has any consequence to their profits/tactics, so it's fine to exist. It's mere idle talk.
When it gets dangerous, it's jail time (e.g. Snowden, Manning), censorship, character assassination (of whistleblowers, etc), firing, etc.
For that to have a chance at working we need to get the outside influence out of government.
I propose that each state ban political ads funded by anyone outside the state - including the national parties. If you dont live there, your input is not wanted.
Another problem is that we ship our representatives off to Washington, away from us and surrounded by outside influencers. Not sure what to do about that, but it's a recipe for not representing the people who they ostensibly should.
Fake News and propaganda is unchecked and rampant. Public intelligence and understanding is at an all time low. Income inequality is at an all time high. Which leads to millions of Americans making their mind up based on emotions and not facts.
“Build a Wall” is not a logical decision.
“Abuse of power is not impeachable” is not a logical decision.
“Socialism is evil” as you collect your Social Security check and rely on Medicare is not a logical decision.
I fully expect another decade or more of racial unrest and outright politically sanctioned violence in the US as mass migrations pick up due to climate change and unrest caused by a resurgence of Nazism and “not one of us” movements.
"...the Jacobins had destroyed the old obligations of the blood and so had emancipated money; now it stepped forward as lord of the land. There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the directions indicated by money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. The great movement which makes use of the catchwords of Marx has not delivered the entrepreneur into the power of the worker, but both into that of the Bourse."
- O. Spengler, "The Decline of the West", Vol. 2 (1928)
Direct democracy has downright massive logistical issues for everyone to learn sufficiently capable of being informed on the issues while adding more may diffuse power it also diffuses responsibility. Simply subdividing more doesn't solve problems as not only would it result in squabbling fiefdoms instead of concern for the whole and lose the advantages of large scale.
Even if we had a known and proven better solution getting it implemented over the status quo would be fiendishly difficult to bootstrap or carry /massive/ side effects like say literal Civil War or Coups and the latter usually make things worse since the winners are based upon their ability to do violence instead of their ability towards any constructive pursuit let alone to govern.
Compound that with the evolution of emotional manipulators - the demagogs and propagandists as an electorally dominant force and every special interest after their own piece of the pie. An educated populace helps as always of course but that is a very long term project. It is a "plant trees and decarbonize 70 years ago" sort of solution.
The kicker is that despite the paragraphs of advantages it is still better than dictatorships and oligarchies. Their bread ans butter are lies, cohesion and the ability to rationalize absurdities to make travesties.
The elected officials are also responsible for the functioning of the society in general. Sometimes you need quite the acrobatics to achieve that, I suppose. In this very case, what would happen if this report would circulate widely and become common knowledge among the population in a short time?
One outcome would be that safety measures and/or alternative water sources would be sought after. One other possibility is that no such short-term solutions are in sight, meaning, you, as the "democratically-elected officeholder" have no way of realistically supply clean water to tens of millions of people. I would bet chaos and panic would ensure. We're talking about health-related problems, and not only about the water having a bad taste.
So, in that view, I suppose that not every truth can come out to light. Some truths can simply be unbearable or have no immediate solution even though the people demand a solution to it. One other alternative might be to promise, publicly, that it will be solved. The years will pass, another promise, another elected official, and on and on.
https://cospringsrealestatenews.com/running-behind-the-ddt-t...
>I remember them with great fondness, and I’ve survived for over 60 years after breathing those fumes…
>We are all alive and kicking well. I have NEVER heard of anyone becoming sick, due to DDT. The reading I have done, showed the woman that declared it bad, never did any research regarding DDT. They took it off the market without proof. I am not a fond follower of the EPA. I think they are a complete mess. They would ban Milk if they had their way. I am all for bringing DDT back. It was a great product.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/energy-environme...
>“Why don’t you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country,” Mr. Blue wrote.” I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars.”
Let's not bundle everyone under "Democracy". Our system is becoming badly broken for many reasons.
* Citizens United (didn't even seem like a good idea at the time)
* Gerrymandering
* The Electoral College (seemed like a good idea at the time)
* Self-interest vs. principals and very basic patriotism
The latter one really bugs me. We would benefit a lot as a nation if everyone had to go through mandatory 6-week bootcamp. Not even service. Just hold a rifle next to your fellow citizen for a bit, and share some food in the chow hall. See how it is out there. Some team building at a national level.
Because, guess what. The Russians have a team. The Chinese have a team. We don't have one. We have a bunch of profiteers in Congress waiting for even bigger lobby and board windfalls after they are done.
This will only get much worse.
My parents and other relatives of their generation grew up in the type of culture you describe. They risked their lives and risked torture to run away from it. The six months of boot camp certainly didn't make the society more cohesive or the make the people trust each other. No one wanted to be there and people were still afraid of themselves, the police, and the government. If it wasn't on a different continent, in a different era, I'd think I'm talking about the US. Needless to say, forcing people to socialize against their will does not lead to social cohesion or patriotism. It leads to resentment. Especially when you force it on people who think that patriotism really is for scoundrels.
I also think there are other intangible benefits to conscripted service aside from exposing people to a wide diversity of their country. We were able to end the Vietnam war because we had a draft. We’ve been at war with terror for 19 years with no end in sight. Too few families are affected now and the nation doesn’t have the will to stop this forever war.
I do generally agree that socializing in the context of killing people is probably not ideal. That said, a very small part of the military actually kills people. The vast majority of the military is either in a support role, or do not find themselves in a situation where they actually need to kill someone. So, I want to discount your first paragraph a bit. That said, I support the idea of a 2 year mandatory service which unlocks benefits like tuition (university, trade, etc). I don’t think that service needs to only be military - I would happily revive the Civilian Conservation Corps, use the Peace Corps, etc to fulfill that service.
Why for for a country that doesn't even care enough about you to provide you healthcare? Fuck that.
But, importantly, next to a random smattering of citizens from diverse locations, not next to a bunch of dudes from your neighborhood.
Xenophobia usually doesn't survive exposure to the xenos.
> The Chinese have a team. We don't have one.
We're a confederation of states. That legacy has really, really had a lasting impact. But IMO, after the outcome of the civil war, we should have formalized that we were one nation first and foremost, and that our states were nothing but administrative subdivisions. But that opinion is on much shakier footing than some of my other opinions, so don't ask me to defend it. :-)
Business are allowed to fail, that's healthy for the overall system.
Capitalism wasn't the dominant mode for most of human history, and Neoliberal capitalism especially so (coming to prominence in the US in the 70s).
There are other ways to organize work/workers, for example into workers co-ops which have been shown to be efficient even at scales of billions of dollars of annual revenue.
Not to mention the entire USA, all 330 million of us, only get ONE president, each state only gets ONE governor, etc. Its hard to say “the US doesn’t want [blank]” when all of the candidates policies need to match such a large and diverse group of people.
Representative democracy involves various groups focusing attention on one issue or the other. When it comes to things like drinking water or food, people’s fear of “impure” food can cause public panic vastly out of proportion to the actual problem. Nobody is thinking “hmm, would I give up stain resistant carpets and clothing and non-stick pans for a negligible lower risk of getting testicular cancer?”
PFAS are, at this point, a cause for study, not a cause for dramatic action: https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/p...
The two most studied, PFOA and PFOS are no longer produced in the US. The others are not well studied:
> But the health effects of the PFAS chemicals used instead of PFOS and PFOA are less known. As these newer chemicals accumulate in the drinking water in some areas of the U.S., scientists and state officials are trying to determine how they affect humans. At least some of them can be eliminated from the body more quickly than PFOS and PFOA and may be less toxic, according to DeWitt—but they still might cause problems, she cautions.
PFAS chemicals have been in wide use since the 1950s. Clearly they are reasonably safe. The question is whether the potential health benefits of reducing their use outweigh the cost of losing their advantages.
Here, there was no “cover up.” Nobody was hiding the measurements of the levels of PFAS in water systems. The question was whether the DHHS should issue a guideline that would set the PFAS target at a level 1/10th as high as what is present in many public water systems is not something that necessarily should happen. After all, how are they deriving that guideline? When you have exposure dependent chemicals, you can’t set the limits at the lowest levels where no harmful effects are detectable. (Remember how everything in California has a cancer warning?) There needs to be a global optimization process that balances benefits and costs. In that context, it was entirely reasonable and proper to refrain from setting such a guideline at this time.
(PFAS are just one example of things that trigger a panic completely out of proportion to actual risk. Another example is alcohol during pregnancy. The medical community in the US has taken the position, with the support of the government, that the only acceptable level is 0. That is even though women in Western Europe routinely drink moderate amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, with seemingly little ill effect.)
I'm not sure if you actually read the article, but the EPA has known about this since 2001. Attempting to make this all about the Trump administration is quite myopic.
From the article:
The EPA has known since at least 2001 about the problem of PFAS in drinking water but has so far failed to set an enforceable, nationwide legal limit. The EPA said early last year it would begin the process to set limits on two of the chemicals, PFOA and PFOS.
The EPA said it has helped states and communities address PFAS and that it is working to put limits on the two main chemicals but did not give a timeline.
If you want to blame someone, blame the EPA for not doing anything for over 17 years.
> The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.
I really hate dredging up past comments/opinions (since it invites ad hominess dismissals of valid points) but felt it was warranted in this case since it is directly related to your comment question of source robustness.