Flame retardant found in US breast milk

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/20/toxic-flame-retardants-human-breast-milk

by geox • 3 years ago

100 95 3 years ago

theguardian.com

garbanz02• 3 years ago

[flagged]

shapefrog2• 3 years ago

If only more politicians were on board with the green agenda or made it one of their parties central issues.

discretion22• 3 years ago

It seems to me that there are two different things being conflated. I've listened to a number of his interviews and do confess he's not always easy to follow but this seems partly due to a history of speech problems which he has worked to overcome.

There is consensus (even by RFK Jr from what I hear in interviews) that vaccines confer good immunity to the population and help control serious diseases that historically killed or maimed millions of people.

There is also an argument RFK Jr. makes which is that the vaccine solutions contain many harmful components other than the actual vaccine and these components are responsible for many harmful outcomes due to their presence. These harmful side effects should not be considered acceptable and there should be work to eliminate these harms because they are not really acceptable.

However, these positions seem to be routinely headlined as being anti-vaccine. They are not. The argument is anti-harm and that seems to be something people would normally support. Only through misrepresentation of his comments do people come to believe he is against vaccines and he should be "rightly maligned".

His interview with Jordan Peterson was very interesting, especially as it did highlight some of RFK Jr's blindspots on politics. Worth taking time to listen to the whole thing even though it is quite long.

losteric• 3 years ago

Here is one of many articles covering RFK's antivaccine conspiracy stance: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kenn...

I use that phrase because it is an accurate descriptor. He has literally published articles claiming a grand conspiracy to poison Americans, rejecting all data from repeated vaccine trials and studies by the international scientific community.

Vaccine trials use the real vaccine that would go to consumers, all of it. There is robust study of the whole package, not just the component that interacts with the immune system.

RFK is a bogus baseless conspiracy theorist, regardless of his current PR campaign.

conception• 3 years ago

If there were significant harms then they would arise is the rigorous trials done before a vaccine is released. This isn’t exactly an unstudied area and his extraordinary claims have no scientifically reviewed evidence. He’s just a guy saying things.

shapefrog2• 3 years ago

misrepresentation of his comments

"We need to, prior to licensing vaccines, do gold standard safety testing, like every other drug approval requires. We need to do double-blind placebo testing."

- We do mate.

Kennedy also said that he wanted to ensure “that vaccines are subject to the same kind of safety scrutiny and safety testing that other drugs are subject to."

- They are already subjected to more safety scrutiny and more safety testing.

"the hepatitis B vaccines that are currently approved had fewer than five days of safety testing."

- 2 years of human clinical trials is a longer length of time than 5 days.

defrost2• 3 years ago

There is also an argument RFK Jr. makes which is that the vaccine solutions contain many harmful components

.. and he started down that path by repeating, without checking, highly bogus discredited "science" about the harmful effects of thimerosal and a deliberate widespread conspiracy regarding its use.

When he jumped on that public bandwagon it had already been out of use for more than a decade after being used for some two decades prior in trace amounts that caused not great issues.

Everything he said was either false, 30 years out of date, or both.

He really hasn't improved much since.

stainablesteel7• 3 years ago

he's always misrepresented by this imo, and the constant hit pieces are blatant because the camp that he runs against does this as a primary strategy.

he called for long-term safety studies for vaccine use, which is just tracking long-term effects, both positive and negative, to populations after getting vaccinated. he rightly points out a lack of this in the US, and rightly points out the concept of tradeoffs. Yes, vaccines can cause other negative long-term effects that aren't as bad as what you're being vaccinated against, in this case they're pulling a net-good. The case is also up for grabs that when this is a net-good or a net-bad, the information is simply not being shared the way it should, and is instead obfuscated by bureaucracy.

even the latest "anti-semetic" jabs at him are from him entertaining a hypothetical in conversation where he said nothing about jewish people being a cause of anything, its just so tiresome. afaik he spoke correctly on the ace-receptor binding affinities, but the binding affinities don't cause the disease to take root more or less. do i care if he gets this detail wrong? not really, it doesn't make him a super space nazi either. to steel man what he said is to admit there's potential for ethnic targeting of bio-weapons, and since its pretty much widely understood that covid did in fact come from joint US/China idiocy, and that China's financial records show that they're preparing for war in every way possible, I wouldn't put it past a regime who's actions seem to be rhyming with a lot of other regimes from history to try to come up with a bioweapon that could potentially have that effect. The west has, after all, basically been pushing venture capital all over the insane nonsense Xi could end up using against them for the last 20+ years.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

This is an unbelievably generous take on RFK2's vaccine views. He has said, as recently as a few days ago on live TV, that vaccine research created HIV and other major diseases. He is not in favor of more long-term research, as you suggest. He is against all vaccine research.

simiones3• 3 years ago

This musing about vaccine safety is quite obviously not some rigorous rationality, it is a simple dog-whistle to attract the rabid anti-vaxxers while not immediately alienating those who rightly view this as an unacceptable position. Vaccine safety is being tracked, and there is no indication whatsoever of any harm from vaccines except for mild symptoms immediately after injection and extremely rare more serious events. The research is done, there is nothing more to discuss.

The latest anti-semitic accusation is also more serious than you make it out to be. He explicitly claims that Covid-19 affected Jewish people ("Ashkenazi Jews") and Chinese people less than others, and talks about that as "targeting". His exact words are that "there is an argument that Covid-19 was ethnically targeted", repeating that it is "targeted to affect Caucasian and Black individuals". He softens it a bit by saying that we don't know if it was deliberately targeted, but he then goes on to talk about how both the USA and the Chinese are working on ethnically-targeted bio weapons, so the implication is more than clear.

I will say that it's not necessarily clear that he is being anti-semitic here, but he is clearly being sinophobic and very very clearly implying that Covid-19 was an ethnically-targeted Chinese bio-weapon, a preposterous claim.

threatofrain• 3 years ago

JFK Jr. has a lot of conspiracy theories, otherwise I'd view the vaccine perspective as merely a quirk.

garbanz02• 3 years ago

To be honest, for someone whose uncle and father were both assassinated, he has a surprisingly level head.

RetpolineDrama2• 3 years ago

Yet another wonderful gift given to the world by cigarette smokers, as if the butts/trash everywhere and toxic second-hand smoke wasn't enough.

For those unaware, smokers would get drunk and pass out with lit cigarettes that would set their couch on fire and burn their house down. This lead to a push to cover everything in "flame retardants" which are more accurately called "human retardants", as they do little to actually prevent combustion from an effective source and are tied to everything from cancer to developmental issues.

zer8k3• 3 years ago

But on the other hand if a mother's child combusts they now have a way to help.

athenot• 3 years ago

It's also the materials used in modern furniture, which catch fire faster.

https://fsri.org/research/new-comparison-natural-and-synthet...

scrlk2• 3 years ago

The 2009 Greenstreet Berman study, carried out by the UK government, showed that in the period between 2002 and 2007 the UK Furniture and Furnishings Fire Safety Regulations accounted for 54 fewer deaths per year, 780 fewer non-fatal casualties per year and 1065 fewer fires each year following the introduction of the UK furniture safety regulations in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_retardant#Fire_safety_st...

With these particular statistics, the benefits of flame retardants vs. poisoning millions of people doesn't seem worth it.

shadowgovt2• 3 years ago

That's an apples / oranges comparison unless we agree on an actuarial calculus for the value of saving an entire life vs. the cost of shortening a million lives by a day.

RetpolineDrama2• 3 years ago

It's likely worse than that, because I suspect this study is biased towards flame retardants being effective.

It is true in a very narrow range of conditions a flame retardant can prevent combustion, but it's like an airbag that will only deploy for impacts between 15 and 17 MPH. In real world circumstances with real world combustion sources they don't make a difference.

jollyllama• 3 years ago

It's do-gooders and "safety first" types who are to blame, unless there was some body of smokers I'm unaware of who said "do this to protect us from the consequences of our own actions."

AlexandrB• 3 years ago

I like how no-one has blamed the tobacco companies who did more than anyone to increase the number of smokers and cigarettes in the world.

rcme• 3 years ago

Not a convincing argument when things like apartment buildings exist.

volkk2• 3 years ago

Reminds me a lot of working in tech to be honest. Things break, postmortems are held. Even if the breakage is as simple as "this was an honest mistake", everything is held to "how can this never happen again," so process and red tape is added. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam until your delivery speed is butchered, the bugs _still_ happen, but hey, a project manager or someone somewhere now gets to pat themselves on the back for running a meeting and adding more process that they can now tout on their future interviews.

jonhohle3• 3 years ago

But at least that exact same bug can never happen again!

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

This is fixed by putting a dollar number on outages, and a seperate dollar number on process. Ie. "if each release has an extra day of tests and checks, then it will delay our hockey stick growth curve by 10%. Thats worth $X".

Turns out, it's usually better to be fast and break things, over trying to be reliable.

Shaanie2• 3 years ago

The entire point is that "an honest mistake" shouldn't be able to cause a large incident at a mature company. Requiring tests, code reviews, a test env, locked-down prod etc may slow down delivery, but it also prevents Andrew the sales dev accidentally corrupting the production database when he's doing a "quick fix for a customer".

j-bos• 3 years ago

I believe DHH of Basecamp(?) fame calls this scarring on the first cut.

musicale• 3 years ago

Yet another wonderful gift given to the world by cigarette smokers

Probably it was the tobacco companies lobbying for this.

nimbius• 3 years ago

wife: have you babyproofed the house

me, an intellectual: I have fireproofed the baby.

webnrrd2k• 3 years ago

I wonder if anyone has milked a house cat and tested it.

HarryHirsch• 3 years ago

Comparative oncology is a thing - epidemiologists do compare incidences of cancer in humans vs their pets to tease out the effect of the environment on cancer because the diet of cats and dogs is very controlled, most all of them get dog or cat food.

sebazzz• 3 years ago

Right, so these as POPs[0], otherwise known as forever chemicals like PFAS and others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_organic_pollutant

wiz21c• 3 years ago

Let's stop everything until proven safe.

Yeah but we need to innovate !!!

Ah ok, it's a compromise then.

Cool, I have plenty of money and the state where I operate is weak so I can buy the compromise !

Frustrating ? yes but there are millions around you who just don't know/care. So you're the only one to be frustrated.

Besides, that's democracy. Sleep well.

jonhohle3• 3 years ago

What does democracy have to do with being poisoned by another entity without knowledge of the risks? Buying laws is the antithesis of democracy. I could see that argument regarding capitalism (though I probably wouldn’t agree).

fnimick2• 3 years ago

And how does regulatory capture fit within your conception that democracy and capitalism are completely separate?

Of course people with large amounts of money and influence can influence ostensibly democratic processes, in order to take more of the money for themselves.

version_five• 3 years ago

Didn't democracy just force us all inside for two years? Tyranny of the majority is always a problem, the solution is a better constitution that prevents this kind of problem. Plus getting personally informed. If fire retardant is your concern, you can probably source things that don't have it if it's important enough to you.

everdrive• 3 years ago

No, you can’t. It’s contaminated ground water, the food supply, and many other things. There is no way to reliable avoid it by personal choice.

fnimick2• 3 years ago

Ah, a libertarian. Would you support everyone having to test every food product they buy in order to make sure they aren't getting exposed? Regulation would be tyranny after all.

(and no, I had no problem with being "forced" inside to stop people from dying - if you did, you might want to look in the mirror and consider your moral framework)

ryantgtg• 3 years ago

It be more accurate to say that democracy forced you _not_ to go inside. I spent a lot of time outside, but some shops were closed or you had to gasp wear a mask in them.

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

Flame retardant found in US breast milk

This is a good thing right? Nobody wants breasts to catch fire!

emaginniss• 3 years ago

Or babies

1MachineElf• 3 years ago

Hot breasts should be safe!

bell-cot3• 3 years ago

No hint of it in the article, but this was a known (and notorious) problem half a century ago. One quick summary here - https://mleead.umich.edu/files/Key_Points_Michigans_1973_PBB...

Flame retardant found in US breast milk

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