Is this article ai generated? It sucks. Are the toxic products all PFAS products? It sure insinuates as much, but doesn’t actually say that. There are lots and lots of “toxic” chemicals; there are over 10k PFAS compounds alone, and toxicity for those is being claimed at ppt levels, which is often lower than can be detected by test methods. Therefore, it’s no wonder they’ll take it slow, rather than eliminate large swaths of the economy without ready replacements.
Terrible article.
We can’t do it, it would impact quarterly profits
But think if the cost to the companies profits! And stock prices! Surely forever chemicals means it will work forever, thats a good thing right? My no stick pan will work forever, until it gets scratched and I throw it out and buy a new one.
One thing folks don’t think about or understand is how critical PFAS polymers are for dairy, food, and pharma production. It is used extensively as there aren’t many suitable alternatives for gaskets, valve seals, pipe lining, instrument coatings, hoses, etc. Alternative materials don’t have the heat, chemical, or biological resistance to effectively work for all applications without introducing other toxic materials or inability to be cleaned and sanitized properly. Ban those materials and those industries will shut down in the EU unless consumer safety is compromised. Development of new materials will take years. We need to move away from PFAS, but it needs to be done in an orderly fashion.
Makes sense. Consumer products can be easily changed however.
The real issue is the byproducts of the industrial processes that use PFAS. Yes, we will need some time to develop new materials that have specific properties, but we need to start addressing how we use these chemicals and dispose of the industrial waste.
Consumer products aren’t the source of the problem. It’s industrial management at the factory… Fix that instead of making every day live shittier for regular people
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The EU has abandoned a promise to ban all but the most vital of toxic chemicals used in everyday consumer products, leaked documents show.
PFAS – also known as forever chemicals – accumulate in nature and in our bodies where they can damage the endocrine, immune and reproductive systems.
The planned ban would have taken thousands of the most hazardous products off the market but it is now unclear whether the proposals will be mothballed or buried.
An EU official declined to comment on the leaked documents but said: “It’s no surprise that the Reach revision doesn’t feature in the work programme.
An earlier leak of the EU’s chemicals plans reported by the Guardian in July showed the scope of the bloc’s ambition had been weakened in the face of intense industry pressure, which was backed by EU political leaders including the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
The Green MEP Bas Eickhout said: “It’s very clear that there’s not enough appetite with this commission to have a proper revision of the Reach regulation, so let’s make it a campaign issue in the June 2024 elections.
The original article contains 569 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
There are quite a few usages of PFAS type materials that are extremely important. That said, using that material for applications where it comes in contact with food is a terrible idea unless it’s completely isolated. Also the application should be such that the material is properly disposed.
Oh great. The liberals have been active in the polls. No wonder the liberals of my country are salivating to join.
“It’s not our fault, it’s the EU! Now let me rinse off my sadness in this money pool…!”
FYI, republicans are “classical liberals”… which is liberal with less taxes and less accountability, but still liberals. Same with “social democrats”. Shills, the lot of them.
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What does liberal mean in this comment? Can you help me understand what liberal republicans are, and how social Democrats are the same?
TL;Dr putting “neo” or “classical” in front of “liberal” is nothing more than pointless gesturing. It’s “emperor’s new economic model”, really.
Liberalism is basically the individualistic economic model. Think Reagen, think Thatcher. The whole word “liberalism” is basically all flowery and sounds nice, but in fact it’s slightly right from centre. It’s a problem of the overton window in the US, or goal post moving, that makes it seem like a lefty ideology, when in fact it is in effect the economic philosophy that defines the US, the UK and Europe today.
At the same time, “social democrats” (which I used to be) is like saying *I put a socialist hat on my liberalism", when in most cases social democrats will vote for exactly the same things liberals vote for, with the added benefit of seeming like they’re being a bit of a collectivist. In the end it’s all about optics.
Republicans notoriously “hate” liberalism, calling the democrats liberals. Here’s the kicker though: there is no “conservative” economic model beyond liberalism, at least not nowadays. The only real difference there is that some actually want right-wing libertarianism, while others would be fine to return to a more nationalistic social policy, with the added benifit of access to international markets, because that’s where they can get their petroleum, uranium, blood diamonds, wage slaves, classic slavery, etc.
In essence liberalism is all about pandering to corporations by harping on about small businesses, but also privatising welfare with “new public management”. The idea there was to to “decentralise government”, when really it is about shoehorning a fuckton of private companies and consultants into the tax system, making public services super expensive and eventually privatising (amongst other things) the health sector, once it is sufficiently expensive enough.
Liberalist social policies may seem more left leaning, but actually adheres to republican concepts. Note; republican proper, speaking of right to vote, citizenry, congressional government, etc - ya know, creating a republic. But the republican party is everything but republican, in that they are nationalists with classical liberal economic model. Before when they were the democrats (party flip in the 50s) they fronted things like taking away voting rights from felons, justifying poverty by way of “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” and trickle-down economics. They shake their fists against democrats and call them “filthy liberals” to move the overton window further from the left. The democrats and republicans, at least the majority, are in essence following samy political economical values and vote for the same economic policies.
It’s all a big dog and pony show, establishment politics in effect. They act all though and call names on camera, then go to a back room, soften their voice and it’s back to business as usual. Fill laws with holes, cut ribbons at ceremonies, yada yada yada.
Do not fall for the okie doke. Black people in the US did, now there’s “black republicans” and the words “power to the people” has all but evaporated. It’s pretty much what you get when the constituency accepts outrage and reactionary politics. You can claim you’re doing something different, but in essence both the dems and the pubs want the same thing, except the pubs are even worse bootlicking, spineless shills than the dems. It also allows the dems more favourable optics so they can pander to the lefties, but make no mistake: economically speaking they want exactly the same things, with few qualifications.
It should also be stated that philosophically there is no real conflict between collectivism and individualism. It’s a bunch of hooey invented by political zealots and romantics a couple of hundred years ago who waxed poetic about concepts they couldn’t understand at the time in fervent hatred against monarchy. Monarchies was seen as the old collectivists, as nationalism was seen as collectivistic. That’s why today we are in the situation we’re in, because American liberalists in particular masturbate furiously in the idolization of the “founding fathers”, because they too were a bunch of masturbatory liberals who made fancy speeches and had paintings made of themselves.
Again, optics, dog and pony show, bread and circus, a bunch of anti-democratic nonsense to keep people busy thinking there is any real difference, when in fact there is none. The same people who talk smack against liberalism, immigration, missuse of public spending, subsidies, “the deficit” (which doesn’t matter in a fiat currency run country, it really doesn’t - it’s just more distractionary politics), etc, either don’t understand what they’re talking about or are just playing their part in the outrage machinery, because they all benifit from liberal economic philosophy and policies. They hold stock, they go to galas, they smile for the camera, they are in effect aristocratic in nature.
Thank you for the write up. I do appreciate it.
I just have two thoughts to share. The article in question is about EU, not the US. And you should probably sit back from the screen for awhile man, it sounds like you’re really deep into this and that’s not healthy.
My guy, the EU is liberalistic economic alliance. They want to become the US 2.0. It’s a slow moving coup of the various European nations sovereignty to streamline liberal policies across the board.
In my country we’re losing collectivistic policies and public services because the EU is slowly shoehorning in more and more liberal policies. We have a “labour party” and a “conservative party” where I’m from, who are exactly the same economically speaking, but the latter shuts up when the former stands by the concepts of liberalism, only to vote for the exact same thing at the end of the day.
Liberalism is the vehicle of capitalism.
And yes, I am taking a break from “the screen”, when I’m not working with code and servers, but that doesn’t mean I should commit intellectual suicide.
Like not even an upvote for all that. Just a false empathy. Thanks.
Did you seriously edit your comment to complain that I didn’t upvote? Wat
Yes, I almost always edit my comments after writing them. In any case, though I wrote in frustration there are obviously good reasons why I was frustrated, which can be found in the text, which you dismissed with fake pathos and bad faith.
Go away.
Man I’m sorry. I didn’t realize upvoting was important to… anyone.
If I upvote your comments will you feel better? I definitely don’t want you to have fake pathos and faith bags. Looking at your tiny amount of Internet points I guess I can see why it upsets you.
