Poison, Poison Everywhere
loeber.substack.com
loeber.substack.com
I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like this.
From that perspective, all of these services that rate products still place all the onus on the individual consumer. What would be really "luxury" in the modern context would be an online marketplace that vetted every product and whose primary product was trust, as opoosed to logistics and convenience. I'd much rather pay $150/yr for a service that vetted its products and took a week to deliver them, than to have a bunch of worthless or dangerous junk delivered the next day.
There are plenty of stories around this
The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands, with the idea being that a company's Brand was worth more than lure of profits/shortcuts that could result in ruining the Brand.
I dunno. Branding was my gig for a long time. I think brands were a weak substitute for artisans / bespoke makers who had to personally stand by their work. Once upon a time there was a guy named Levi Strauss who made sturdy jeans, some guy named McDonald who made good hamburgers, a couple guys named Johnson who sold talcum powder. And that guy Nobel who invented new ways to blow up the coyote. If any of their products failed, it was on them. Then branding came along and quality declined, but people paid for inferior products because they had the name and stamp of the founder on them. The notion that brands have to maintain the quality associated with their namesake is the central illusion that trillions of dollars spent on branding seeks to create. It turns out that it's cheaper to prop up the name with advertising than it is with selling quality products.
And that doesn't even touch on brands like DuPont or Chevron, where all the positive connotations are purely from brand marketing built as a shroud around selling mass death.
Another way to say that is "companies are too big". When companies become big enough that they don't have to worry about the repercussions of screwing over their customers, they're too big.
To be serious: I don't think that overpopulation or delivering better things to more people is really the problem. Big companies are indeed a problem. Along with big governments on the other side. They both rely on rent-seeking methods of extracting value while lowering expectations, rather than providing better services. There needs to be a balance of regulation and innovation, that prevents regulatory capture and prevents monopolies without exploding bureaucracies that hamper small businesses. Small businesses are fantastic drivers of prosperity and creativity. That would be the civic ideal I'd implement if I had any interest in getting into government.
That's a huge generalisation. Plenty are every bit as dodgy as the big ones.
Those are usually rectal thermometer, with 0.1°C precision or better. Also sometimes used to measure body temperature in armpits.
The major flaw in your example is that you have a site saying product X is good and trusted, but people will then go look online for a competitor that sells it for cheaper.
This is where capitalism clashes with consumer rights / safety. What should be the case is that all products sold on all stores are safe. That's what consumer safety organizations are for, but it seems like they have lost the battle against the flood of Chinese crap coming in.
At least in Europe, this is mainly because these companies ship for cheap directly to customers. Customs and the like can check a container full of the same USB chargers easily and efficiently, but if that container full crosses the border in 10.000 individual packages it's impossible.
Thankfully they're putting the brakes on it, but it took forever.
Product X is good and trusted, except:
- due to mixed inventory you were sent product Y, which is poison
- product X has a complex supply chain, and it was previously good and trusted, and now it's poison and you had no idea anything changedThe Amazons and Walmarts of the world are only able to offer those cheaper prices because they engage in practices that were, are, and/or should be illegal. Practices like violating the Robinson–Patman Act, collusion, exploiting workers, knowingly selling dangerous goods, and outright bribery are the real reason why they have out-competed local small businesses, and a large part of why so many people are only able to afford goods sold at the cheapest prices in the first place.
Getting rid of Chinese crap wouldn't solve anything. We need strong regulations with very sharp teeth to be consistently enforced in order to give consumers protection and allow small businesses to stand a chance to grow and thrive.
I also feel like Amazon should take more responsibility, but then I get angry when my ISP or government "takes responsibility" for online content. What's the difference between Amazon and an ISP? One could argue an ISP is a natural monopoly and therefore should always be a neutral carrier. But maybe Amazon is a natural monopoly too? Could the economy really support ten different Amazons? That would be like having ten different Silk Roads, but there's only one way from Asia to Europe.
It does seem odd to me that Amazon gets a free pass as a common carrier while ISPs seemingly do not. Probably because taking responsibility would affect Amazon's bottom line, while ISPs don't really care.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road (The ancient trading route, not the darknet marketplace).
I did wonder about how this kind of thing was handled in the UK, and (a) Amazon will happily offer a mercury thermometer for sale and (b) it has been illegal to sell mercury thermometers in the UK since 2009.
The absolute poster child for ubiquitous illegal toxic products though? Disposable vapes.
We profit from letting others be free to harm you but we cannot be held responsible.
disruptism ? platformism ?
Consumer protection had a brief heyday, but is far from status quo in even the last century of history.
By now the market has "matured" to pure profit orientation. Health or even survival are irrelevant. /s
I played with mercury a bit when I was a kid, as did every kid who could - it was COOL! From that I learned: mercury is almost omniphobic. Oil avoids mixing with water. Mercury avoids mixing with, holding on to, and generally touching anything.
So how could a blob of mercury stick to a glass tip???
Sincere question.
Bulb of mercury. Fine tube extending up from it. Thermal expansion of the bulb produces a big effect on how far up the tube it goes.
They work. They're safe unless you break them. But they can break.
The funding for this is tough, though. Everyone loves the idea, but it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works over brand building and marketing. I've had to be very scrappy. Hopefully this will change in the future as we build momentum and awareness, but for right now it's tooth and nail.
In the US it doesn't matter. Just talk about the problem and pretend like it works. You'll be rich.
And your supplements might well be contaminated...
Feels like modern society makes it nearly impossible to not be exposed to harmful substances...so I hope you're successful.
Either way, it's like the article said - it's impossible for us consumers to figure any of this stuff out. We have to rely on public agencies, which are under constant attack from multinational corporations throwing billions of dollars at the issue, because following regulations costs money. And that's in developed countries, if you're buying stuff from places with barely functional food quality inspection then good luck I guess.
From Wikipedia:
> The reported half-life of glyphosate in soil varies from two to 197 days with a typical field half-life of 47 days being suggested.[56] Soil and climate conditions affect glyphosate's persistence in soil. The median half-life of glyphosate in water varies from a few days to 91 days.[56] At a site in Texas, half-life was as little as three days. A site in Iowa had a half-life of 141.9 days.[94] The glyphosate metabolite AMPA has been found in Swedish forest soils up to two years after a glyphosate application.
It has a lower half-life in water, and a lower half-life when it's warmer. I store my oats both dry and cold.
As for cancer, I don't know - but it certainly is giving everyone parkinsons.
That's a personal opinion. Actual scientific research is divided, and therefore anything but "certainly".
Basically by killing all of the weeds with something that won't kill the crop you are about to plant, means you don't have to plough. It is a classic trade off, do you want the (hard to quantify and heavily disputed) risk of glyphosate, or higher carbon emissions
No till farming is much more difficult to do organically.
Or grow less crop just as food for animals to be eaten again, it is so horribly inefficient.
Humans are not strong enough to pull ploughs. You could grow food and feed it to draught animals, but as you point out, that is horribly inefficient.
Mythical Electric Tractor or not, you still have carbon being released from the ground by ploughing to control weeds. You can avoid ploughing to control weeds with glyphosate.
When a better solution for weed control comes along we can say goodbye to glyphosate too, I believe it is about as far off as Desktop Linux, as in 'next year'.
Just remember, glyphosate costs farmers money. They wouldn't use it if there was a better way
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation#Systemic_desi...
> We specifically prohibit the use of Glyphosate spraying at any stage of the growing of oats by our farmers.
https://www.flahavans.com/inside-flahavans/our-oats/gmo-glyp...
It now occurs to me that the mould could have grown post-harvest, and maybe reliance on herbicides to desiccate crops could encourage a sloppy attitude toward drying. Maybe organic crops actually have lower risk of mycotoxin contamination because the farmers are forced to take more care with moisture levels. I carefully taste a small portion of each new batch, but I don't think taste is a reliable means of detecting mould contamination. It's also possible that mould grew because of improper storage after the oats were packaged, which is made worse by the modern trend of cardboard/paper packaging.
I'm still not confident with any brand, but I like oats too much to stop eating them.
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I don't take a lot of supplements, but I won't buy even one without some form of third party testing.
Look at it another way, isn’t it good to know you probably don’t need suplements.
If it isn't proven with multiple, independent studies, it is snake oil.
Sure, it could all be a hoax. But we don't have too many alternatives.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680>
The appropriate solution is legislation.
Perhaps more generally phrased as governance
Yes, the answer is not some business plan by which some can dodge disaster in an untrustworthy market, the answer is to recognize that this planet is a spaceship i.e. materially closed, and we are massively soiling the nest, microplastic is in steak because it's literally everywhere on the surface of the earth, etc.
Therefore, good ecological governance is a requirement, as is the analysis, as a public service, of the resources and ecosystems, and the services they provide human beings and our dependents, i.e. a democratic and just policy, not a lucrative plan to privatize yet more of public health
If one is convinced the best vehicle for the above in the near term is a business, then it had better have a different approach than is typical of personal health tech startups
Empowering individuals isn't worthless by any means but pitting one against another with asymmetric information is worse than worthless
Prior to free trade, you could reasonably sue the manufacturers or distributors for egregious harms. You could also reasonably expect domestic regulatory authorities to intervene before these harms entered the market.*
In principal, this could be done in a free trade system with counterparties who implement and enforce similar rules. But then you need all parties to agree on any new rules and enforcement mechanisms. You only need one bad actor to nuke the arrangement by growing without these burdens.
* Assuming regulations and laws are equitably and incorruptibly enforced in the local government.
Somewhat ironically, a countervailing strategy has emerged of charging more for something based on the claim that it's "natural", "organic", "handcrafted", etc. This strategy can also be seen in various types of "detectors" and at-home tests for things, and perhaps even things like the ConsumerLabs mentioned in another comment.
This muddies the waters even more, since even people who are willing to pay more for something that's better can't figure out how to avoid paying more for something that's just equally bad. These problems exist not just in the realm of food and health but in all product categories.
Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.
Read about the hole in the ozone layer. Banning lead paint. Read about the invention of public water authorities. Read Silent Spring and read about its aftermath. Look into the history of air pollution and the EPA. These are some of the crown jewels of human history.
If the FDA never got established, would firms emerge that put their seals of approval on medicine and become trusted? We will never know. It's pointless to point out what happened before the FDA and after because these are not random samples, the FDA didn't get randomly created. The demand for the FDA if denied would have transformed into the demand for something else.
We will also never know the progress in medicine we lost due to the red tape. There would of certainly been scandals and deaths, but if we got a cancer cure as a result would it not have been worth it?
I suspect that if regulation was not a feature of government we would of solved it in other ways, such as the ability to pierce the corporate veil both civilly and criminally for gross negligence etc. And third parties whose only product is trust - these parties would have infinitely more incentive to preserve that trust than governments.
And why wouldn’t a company “whose only product is trust” not be incentivized to sell that trust to the highest bidder? Companies sell out all the time and continue to do good business for a decade or more on customer trust they built up or came with the brand name they bought.
The saying “regulations are written in blood” comes to mind. So where are all the examples of things getting fixed through other means when regulation isn’t written to fix something?
Passing legislation without the latter is meaningless, and if you have the latter, you don't necessarily need legislation; the free market will force a correction (although politicians will follow the will of the people anyway).
You cannot achieve that across the countless toxins and/or potential toxins that exist in our world; the public does not have enough attention to spare for that.
Or to put it more simply, regular people don't have the time or energy to spare on worrying about every little thing that could potentially, maybe be toxic, in some tiny way over decades.
The free market is very bad at solving problems with a lack of information. Efficient markets rely on buyers having a clear idea of what they're buying. You might hope that people are willing to pay for certification services or whatever, but this is not actually how naive consumers operate. There are already services like that and they operate on the fringes.
The notion that there is not enough public attention to ask for legislation about toxins as a general concept ("pinpoint" is demonstrably not needed), but there is enough attention for that same public to navigate an information marketplace about those toxins to make informed buying decisions, is laughable. Even more so when the former has actually happened multiple times and the latter remains a niche phenomenon.
Government action in democracies just about always lags public support (because you need the public to support a thing so you can say "elect me I'll do it" or "re-elect me I did it").
They want a return to using Lead/Asbestos, a return to incandescent light bulbs, gutting/defunding/removal of most federal consumer protection and health, and environmental agencies. They think that the Ozone hole was a myth invented by globalist ZOG Soros funded marxists.
Right now, the dominant cultural narrative is Schadenfreude. Shitting up the environment to make someone you hate feel bad is absolutly the most popular approach to regulation right now. This is why hardcore southern conservatives love to "Roll Coal" and it's also why Trump just shared an AI generated meme of him literally shitting on America.
"You gotta take what you can get. This level of concern is right out the CIA guidebook of how to infiltrate a group and make sure nothing gets done"
Well, you can have a better enforcement mechanism then. One that involves things like fines and jail time for executives of companies that perpetrate harms on the public via their products.
Also in your linked example, you brought up reading and literacy as something that would not improve collective problems, and I couldn't disagree more.
Further, setting up solar + batteries solves a non-modest individual problem, but is not by itself (i.e. reducing carbon footprint; an example mentioned in the parent's link) the solution to climate change. (yes it helps; but incentives leading to people installing solar have a much bigger impact; and the biggest incentive was maybe China building a solar panel industry, but I'm not trying to go down that tangent)
With the solar+battery, I was thinking of solving grid issues and energy prices, which it does do.
The appropriate solution is legislation AND individual empowerment.
But the big lobbyists hate that, so it'll never happen.
Leaded gasoline was known to be problematic from day 1. The science was suppressed for years. Look up what happened immediately after that iconic tv stunt where the guy washed his hands in leaded gasoline (he had a psychotic break from lead exposure and was institutionalized)
Forever chemicals were known to be problematic and far more prevent than expected. 3M suppressed the science for literally decades. Senior leadership at 3M deliberately suppressed the data.
We should crush without mercy those who rob us of the right to protect ourselves when they suppress the science that is supposed to provide warning. Make penalties for suppressing science so severe that nobody attempts to do it. How specifically? If you hide information that your product kills, you get prosecuted for murder. If there are financial damages make them treble damages. Make it hurt so bad it’s not worth doing.
The answer is knowing. Individuals and institutions knowing the real dangers and acting appropriately. The place of governance is punishing those who knowingly hide the dangers and prevent us from taking appropriate proactive action.
Everyone knows that the correct solution is to fund startup X.
In Canadian elementary school in the 2000s, we spent a long time talking about our carbon footprint. The hope was that by carpooling and turning off lights when you left the room, we might still have an Earth to live on by 2030.
Even at the time I felt a little patronized. Having read enough literature on the subject now the math does become clear: we won't solve our climate issues by guilt tripping children on their individual consumption. It's a problem that needs international government attention.
My case and probably those of others lead to a huge cleanup of the bridge.
My life has been absolutetly plagued with chronic health and "developmental" problems. Neurodivergence and other conditions litter my family tree, but they seem to effect me much more severely than they do most of my relatives.
I often find myself wondering these days if my life would have featured significantly less hardship were it not for the lead poisoning.
Good article. But just to note, lead was already a known poison at the time when it was added to gasoline. Significant concerns were raised. Production was even halted for a while in the US due to health incidents.
The guy who owned the patent for leaded gasoline and who promoted its use even got lead poisoning himself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
I'd always assumed it was some expensive-to-remove byproduct of manufacture or something, so they left it in to save costs despite the risks.
Why did this happen?
What makes the difference between a fake hand wringer and a real one, by the way? Whether or not this happen to be standing near you at the moment?
> Oil companies and automobile manufacturers (especially General Motors, which owned the patent jointly filed by Kettering and Midgley) promoted the TEL additive as an inexpensive alternative superior to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit.
Functionally, as others have commented, it is there to reduce knocking. But lead was used instead of ethanol (aka alcohol) because it was more profitable despite being poisonous.
Just adding the lead addictive to gasoline reduced your gas mileage. But it made better engines work.
Leaded gas compared to ethanol mixed gas with equivalent octane numbers should have something around 1% or 2% difference.
All of this is assuming the engine has the same efficiency on both fuels, rather than, for example, using a much higher compression ratio on the ethanol.
Lead was used because it was cheaper.
The FDA, FTC, EPA, etc should be involved here.
VC-backed companies in the tech space have an especially horrid track record on this stuff. I was reading about how cool Blueprint seems as a company, but couldn’t help thinking “at least until they get bought out or fucked by investors”
Which is exactly why the government should be involved. Companies simply do not have incentives to protect humans in almost any way without the government stepping in. It’ll always be cheaper to fuck humans over, and always more expensive to do right by them.
I inclined to trust the business which earns money from me - this means they are aligned with value I get and there is little incentive to break the trust and a high stakes to keep the trust when you get paid to be trustworthy.
I trust more the greedy capitalists than politicians in this question because I don't understand incentives of the latter. At least the business model is fairly transparent - you can check the company and how it makes money, in reverse incentives of the governments and their officials is broken - to get elected, get rich, get power, not lose job and keep producing new laws and regulations because if you want to keep your job you can't say “Everything is working, the best thing I can do right now is to monitor the system, collect the data and do nothing for a few years”.
It's wild. I have children, and I spent a great time researching foods, bottles, toys, etc., but I would've never thought much about doubting the (big brand) consumer electronics that we all use every day.
The article specifically calls out pthalates and bisphenols (both common in plastics), but there's absolutely no reason to believe -- unless you're regularly eating your headphones -- that this is a problem.
Let me just save you the effort of further rounds of responses here: if you chew on plastic, you will be exposed to the chemicals in plastic. If you’re truly worried about this, don’t buy plastic items.
But this should be considered when we make blanket claims about it’s okay because we’re just touching them, not eating them. We have to think about how people actually behave, not ideal usage.
By the way, headphones are required in elementary school here and are used at least an hour a day.
Bunnies everywhere put on notice.
Where can I find details on this?
Sadly, it's not a complete solution as some harmful substances bio-accumulate in other tissues. A benefit may be had regardless as some substances leach back into the blood if the concentration gradient is sufficient.
If the logic is "get rid of your bad blood, let your body make some good blood instead", why would the body make the good blood if all we consume is full of plastic anyways?
You will see a benefit for any and all harmful substances for which blood tests exist. Because the blood test implies blood levels being a proxy for the substance so it either accumulates there or leaches into it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6750289/#:~:text=The%20custo...
And if you live in a city today it's only marginally better. Remember that everyone selfishly driving their car is choosing to poison you rather than dealing with public transport. They give you lung cancer from their exhaust and microplastics in the brain from their tires. And if that wasn't enough, year after year the cars get bigger and survivability for pedestrians in an accent, especially children becomes less likely the larger the car.
The inconvenient truth is that car drivers are horrible humans causing harm to their direct environment they themselves have to life in but we as a society deem that totally a-ok. And the Road accidents every year? Necessary and unavoidable of course. But then the same people argue about gun control. The double-think is astounding.
For me, I make a conscious attempt not to use a car unless it's actually warranted. I often go weeks without driving at all. Many people have the opposite approach: they take every possible opportunity to drive.
I applied for YC. We got in!
And now we're chipping away at this corner of human health: treating the root cause of allergies with protein exposure therapy (allergy immunotherapy) instead of covering up allergy symptoms with ineffective (and, it turns out, dangerous) antihistamines.
Especially considering the age of people who actually vote and who the politicians in power are (at least in the U.S.)
I at least assume lead exposure now is lower than when leaded gas was primarily used. In the US it started to be phased out in 1973 and finished in 1996.
There's a lagging effect from lead exposure, so it's difficult to pinpoint when those exposed would be most impacted.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-americans-vote-and-ho...
…but then also to stop worrying after reasonable steps were taken because it’s an endless rabbit hole
I wonder if folks who aren't so keen on the idea of climate change would be more open to the idea of population-level poisoning?
These two issues seem to get lumped in the same bucket but it does seem that population-level poisoning seems to be more of an acute threat. Lead, asbestos, microplastics, PFAs, pesticides... Who knows what these will do over generations, and there is certainly more chemical poisons we've introduced into our environment that we haven't even discovered.
For whatever reason, a “natural” lifestyle is more compatible with American conservative politics than an environmentally responsible lifestyle. I think the two can easily overlap, but the former would have to emphasized for it to get any traction with that audience.
EDIT: Replace “for whatever reason” with “due to the influence of the fossil fuel industry”
...and then I saw your link. I'll leave this comment here for the convenience of others.
In the USA too: https://www.consumerreports.org/about-us/what-we-do/
If I made you a chair out of wood and finished it with pure linseed oil, do you promise not to complain that it needs repainting regularly? If I make you a cushion out of horse hair and canvas, do you promise not to complain that it is uncomfortable and not flame retardant? Will you be ok that you can't wipe off stains like you could with your old one?
The convenience of modern materials is what drives this, as much as the profit motive
It doesn't have to be a business, and it absolutely should not be. Preventing poisoning of people, animals, and the environment is something capitalism has proven utterly incapable of, and in fact (literally) violently opposed to.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the government level. The goal is societal benefit, not profit.