Hacker News Reader

Comment by antasvara | Hacker News Reader

Alcohol kills humans in relatively small quantities as well, and it would certainly kill a bird with significantly less. Chocolate makes dogs incredibly sick as well, while not having the same effect on humans.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't ban PFAS. They're proven to be dangerous to humans, and we should absolutely be concerned about long-term effects. It's just that "it kills a bird" isn't a justification for banning something. I'm under the impression that burned food and smoke isn't great for you either; it's possible that the trade-off between a dirty oven and increased PFAS exposure is acceptable.

Ultimately it depends on the magnitude of the danger, and I don't know enough about airborne PFAS to know if it warrants a blanket ban on any products with Teflon.

View on HN

> It's just that "it kills a bird" isn't a justification for banning something.

I don't know, it killing lots of things with lungs seems like a red flag to me.

Perhaps it warrants switching the assumption "Teflon good (until proved harmful)" to "Teflon bad (until proven safe)".

It's already proven not to be safe. If you overheat a pan and breath it in you'll come down with flu like symptoms and nausea.

I'd be open to that viewpoint. Assuming something to be bad based on an animal trial is generally how we approve medicines, so there's precedent for it.

I will say that we should be wary of banning products based on potential long-term effects with unknown magnitude. Knowing where to draw that line is tough.

>Chocolate makes dogs incredibly sick as well, while not having the same effect on humans.

Few people know this, but the thing in chocolate that kills dogs, theobromine, acts as a caffeine-like stimulant in human beings but with a much longer half-life. Although human livers are much more able to deal with it than dogs, this could conceivably be causing human problems in people who often eat a lot of chocolate less than seven hours before bed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthine [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine

>I don't know enough about airborne PFAS to know if it warrants a blanket ban on any products with Teflon.

If you look at the CDC website, PFAS has a rap sheet a mile long. You should probably just clean your pans. If you can afford it, get a reverse osmosis system [3], they are very good at removing PFAS.

[2] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/index.html [3] https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa...

> this could conceivably be causing human problems in people who often eat a lot of chocolate less than seven hours before bed

Well so will the actual caffeine.

Still, "not having the same effect on humans" is pretty misleading. It's maybe 4x more potent in a dog. Body weight is a much bigger factor. Not many people are going to eat "one ounce of milk chocolate per pound of body weight" or the equivalent dose of darker chocolate.

Only because it's too expensive

1 oz/lb is about 5kg for an adult male. The price isn’t the only reason you’re not going to eat that much.

This of course varies by person.

I am more or less immune to caffeine (in human concentrations), drinking all kind of coffees before going to bed (espresso, filtered, turkish, ...).

I noticed several times that it had the opposite effect (putting me to sleep). My brother has the same.

Xylitol the artificial sweetener is another thing that is harmless in people but very bad for dogs.

https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/xylitol-toxicity-in-d...

except: "Excessive consumption may induce laxative effects"

I wonder about this. Is this a benign side effect, or the body's way of moving a troublesome substance out of the digestive system?

The rap sheet you've posted seems to suport my general idea. It states that PFAS has been dangerous in lab animal trials using levels of PFAS that are much higher than environmental levels.

It seems there have been some investigations in humans, but to be honest the effects seem largely similar to a lot of other legal substances. Alcohol is dangerous to pregnant women and infants, a fatty burger can raise cholesterol, etc.

That is a cause for concern, and I've conceded this in my original comment. However, it's not the strongest evidence for a blanket ban.

Or, alternatively, we could treat this as strong enough evidence of an effect and ban many other substances that we use every single day. I can think of plenty of foods that raise cholesterol, and I can certainly think of plenty that pregnant women aren't allowed to eat because of low birth weight fears or other complications.

It's not a question of whether to ban it - none of us could if we wanted to - but of whether to buy it.

> Alcohol kills humans in relatively small quantities as well

In absolute quantities it's less toxic than fructose, paracetamol or THC. It's among least toxic substances found in nature. Almost no one dies from acute toxicity of alcohol - almost all alcohol-related deaths are due to accidents and chronic toxicity (long term exposure to toxicant).

I don't know of any household appliances that as part of their regular functioning doses you with alcohol.

Or many household appliances that can reliably kill of your pets at all.

So I don't really get this nitpick.

The point is that quantities of alcohol that hurt/kill birds aren't illegal, because those quantities aren't dangerous enough to humans to warrant legal action. It's similar to how we don't accept animal trials as all the evidence required to approve a new drug.

Some things kill animals and not humans. Some quantities of substances kill animals and not humans. Knowing that a product kills your bird is cause for investigation or concern, but not a reason for a blanket ban.

Also, they use warfarin to treat stroke victims and rat poison. Because it is poisonous isn't reason to not use it in humans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com