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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Also leaded gas, also asbestos. Leaded gas left a trace in the Earth's crust about which future archeologists will remark of our fallen civilization "Oh yeah, this kind of explains the PFAS layer, too."

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There is always a time where a harmful substance is introduced, suspicions develop, and data is inconclusive. As I mentioned, that may be where we are with PFAs.

But for each of these there are dozens of examples where people are hysterical about some new substance, correlations are shown, and it turns out to be nothing. We could be there with low level exposure to PFAs too.

With asbestos, like with cigarettes, there was a form of cancer that almost only appears in people exposed to it. That’s a solid smoking gin that’s totally absent here.

So it's okay to expose people to whatever might kill them and only do something decades later when proof overwhelms companies and politicians trying their best to do nothing in the name of profit?

That profit pays your paycheck, at least a little, and is part of your retirement. And the product is part of the product you and everyone else decided they wanted to own.

And the cleanup and health care costs are deducted from that.

I see you used the word 'when' instead of 'if'. Are you from the future? How do you know this?

Sure, proof might never overwhelm corporate power and politics and people will be exposed to something bad forever.

Sorry, that's not what I meant. What I mean is: You are predicting that the overwhelming proof will ever exist.

This prediction may turn out to be true, but why should I believe your prediction over that of anyone else's? Do you have some insider knowledge or expertise that you can share?

Edit: Also, what do you give the odds of your prediction, by severity of outcome? I want to see how the odds you provide stack up against the economic and thus social consequences of under-regulation or over-regulation.

About pfas? I dont know. Wasn't commenting about that specifically, just how bad our system works in general.

I hear what you're saying but foundationally this is a bullshit argument. The entire debate evaporates if you simply shift the burden of proof where it belongs and state that Things must comprehensively prove their safety before being released onto the market or otherwise into the wild.

They knew and they carried on to the detriment of all of humanity. The penalties we have are insufficient. Perdue pharma got away with mass murder.

There's a perverse incentive to carry on with grossly detrimental products, because an admission that they are detrimental could bring on claims of liability. The penalties have to be harsh enough to overcome that reluctance.

They knew what? The really important question (do these chemicals in the levels we see in the body of average Joe cause harm?) is still unknown. Yet half the population is ready to tar and feather 3M execs due to the hysteria. (Never mind that a dozen other chemical companies are still on the hook too.)

Purdue pharma might not be off the hook yet (didn’t the judgment that protected them from criminal liability get reversed? I admit I don’t know as much about that case.) and did commit mass murder, but this isn’t that. We don’t know that any sizable number of people have even been harmed by these yet, that’s my point. What does one evil corporation have to do with an entirely related other one? Are we supposed to just jail the execs of any corporation who we think may have done something wrong just because of Purdue Pharma?

We know PFAs and the like are in most people in low levels. We know there are a bunch of very weak correlations with various health defects with no indication of causality.

The penalty was harsh. That’s a whopping figure even for a mega corp. I just don’t see the case for jail time here like I do with the Sacklers.

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