Poison, Poison Everywhere

https://loeber.substack.com/p/29-poison-poison-everywhere

by dividendpayee • 9 months ago

326 196 9 months ago

loeber.substack.com

The trend of making these medical tests cheaper and easier to obtain is going to result in a lot of positive change. Certainly for individuals and hopefully the anonymized data helps get the spotlight on larger trends.

lr4444lr3• 9 months ago

This is precisely why I happily pay for an annual subscription to ConsumerLab[0]. It's largely just for supplements and a few functional foods, but with a tiny staff they are doing more work to help the public on the unregulated medicine market than the entire FDA, IMHO.

[0]https://www.consumerlab.com/

modeless• 9 months ago

I also recently subscribed to ConsumerLab, and I'm glad I did. I wish they could test products more frequently as things are bound to change from batch to batch, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.

I don't take a lot of supplements, but I won't buy even one without some form of third party testing.

the__alchemist• 9 months ago

Subscribed. Thanks!

freddie_mercury• 9 months ago

Congress are the ones who define what the FDA does. Blame them and the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Congress could easily tell the FDA to do something different.

kragen7• 9 months ago

Blaming people for a problem only helps if you have the power to take away their ability to cause the problem. In this case, the most effective way to keep Congress from causing you health problems by giving you misinformation about supplements would seem to be to get your information from a source that Congress doesn't control, such as ConsumerLab. Hopefully it's a better source than the FDA rather than a worse one; but, if not, maybe you can switch to a better one, or start one yourself.

codybontecou• 9 months ago

What does a subscription to ConsumerLab provide you? Is in in-depth product-reviews? e.g. you are curious of a supplement, you check there first?

lr4444lr3• 9 months ago

Independent lab testing for contaminants and actual active ingredient levels vs. what's stated. They also publish summaries of studies on the active ingredients that test the effectiveness against claimed therapeutic value. (It's depressing how few studies actually show benefit over placebo.)

k92943• 9 months ago

Also, a happy customer of the consumerlab. Highly recommend the product.

NalNezumi• 9 months ago

Looks like something I'd love to support / become member in, but I wonder how many brands outside US the lab tests? Do they also test products available in Europe/Asia?

kgwxd• 9 months ago

I don't see anything new here. How is it not just another "quality" seal that can be bought through some under-the-table deal?

lr4444lr3• 9 months ago

You should read their methodology. For one, they are entirely subscriber supported. Secondly, they send out people to buy the product at random stores off the shelf, not solicit manufacturers to send possibly biased batches. Thirdly, manufacturers often write in to them when they receive bad reviews, urging a retest. (The back and forth of those letters gets published.)

Sure, it could all be a hoax. But we don't have too many alternatives.

PyWoody• 9 months ago

TechGearLab[0] is a great, free resource, too. I have never been done wrong by one of their reviews and I have been using them for years.

[0] https://www.techgearlab.com/

torcete• 9 months ago

If you have ever visited the ruins of Pompeii, you might have seen all the lead pipes that provided water to the city. I wonder how that affected the health of the citizens back then.

arthurbrown• 9 months ago

My understanding is that the high calcium content in their water supply formed a lining on the inside of the pipes which largely prevented any exposure.

decimalenough• 9 months ago

They doubled down on the exposure by adding lead to wine though.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6750289/#:~:text=The%20custo...

LorenPechtel6• 9 months ago

Yeah, the water problems in Flint weren't the pipes directly, but that the water had changed so the lead was no longer protected from getting in the water.

koliber• 9 months ago

Less than the volcano.

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

That's cherry picking. Most days the volcano didn't bother anyone...

teddyh• 9 months ago

Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680>

The appropriate solution is legislation.

DennisP• 9 months ago

Maybe so, but in the meantime I'll take all the empowerment I can get.

walleeee• 9 months ago

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

lumost• 9 months ago

The fundamental constraint the article alludes to is the powerlessness of consumer choice. You can’t make a better choice because you don’t have any better option. When there is a better option, you lack the tools to verify that the option is truly better vs scamming you to pay more for something which either doesn’t matter or is simply a lie.

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.

Ferret74462• 9 months ago

That's not a solution. There is no practical solution for this, and has not been for the millennia on human history; it's only been in the recent decades where we've been able the hallucinate about knowing about toxins in our daily lives.

Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.

andrewflnr2• 9 months ago

This is nonsense, regulation has forced huge improvements in food quality. You don't need lawsuits if agencies are regularly testing and authorized to levy penalties based on the results.

jdietrich• 9 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Food_and_Drug_A...

hiddencost• 9 months ago

Uh, it used to be until it was gutted in the last 30 years. Legislation and bureaucracy has been one of the most successful interventions for public health for centuries.

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.

_DeadFred_2• 9 months ago

To quote a previous HN post I saved:

"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"

BrenBarn3• 9 months ago

Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.

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.

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

I'm familiar with BSABSVR, but this is GNDASVA (Government Never Does Anything So Vote Anarchist).

margalabargala4• 9 months ago

I disagree with this. There are plenty of counterexamples where an individual can have a measurably positive impact on their own life. Solar + batteries comes to mind.

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.

gertlex• 9 months ago

Feels like you're on a different tack here: improving your "own life" is different from solving "collective problems".

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)

Cthulhu_4• 9 months ago

Unfortunately, individual action doesn't have significant effects - the article mentions leaded fuels, that wasn't something that could be done by individuals alone. You mention solar + batteries but to be blunt, that's only something middle class homeowners can afford, and they're a minority. Maybe some landlords in housing projects but they want government funding for that.

bad_username• 9 months ago

This mindset is dangerous - "weak individuals, you better let the strong benevolent government solve your problems".

The appropriate solution is legislation AND individual empowerment.

RobotToaster• 9 months ago

Ideally legislation that creates individual empowerment.

But the big lobbyists hate that, so it'll never happen.

Cthulhu_4• 9 months ago

But also education; one major shift is that measures that were taken in the past (e.g. vaccination campaigns) were so successful that a generation or three of people have grown up without any of the vaccinated diseases, so now they're like "...why do we even need these?". Add some scaremongering of chemicals and demonizing of autism aaand there's epidemics of measles again.

more_corn• 9 months ago

What if the solution begins with science?

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.

wolvesechoes• 9 months ago

Blasphemy!

Everyone knows that the correct solution is to fund startup X.

joenot443• 9 months ago

Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work.

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.

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

But I bought a stainless steel reusable straw!

klevertree1• 9 months ago

I'm tackling part of the issue of food toxin remediation with my new venture, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com). It's a modified oat fiber supplement that selectively traps BPA, PFAS, and plasticizers in the gut and reduces levels in the blood serum.

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.

jonway• 9 months ago

I wish you luck!

tomrod• 9 months ago

Not sure or the US programs are running, but check out SBIRs

BugsJustFindMe• 9 months ago

it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works

In the US it doesn't matter. Just talk about the problem and pretend like it works. You'll be rich.

hshdhdhehd• 9 months ago

Good luck. I'll order some if it works.

krackers• 9 months ago

Except now I have the problem of trusting that this new supplement isn't contaminated with anything, _and_ that the "microscopic pores" resulting from this "patented process" don't turn out to have some harmful effect in the body.

cenamus2• 9 months ago

I guess it would be sort of similar to activated charcoal? And that's surely well studied, and also "eaten"

Flere-Imsaho• 9 months ago

Sounds interesting. I heard about oat's ability to absorb nasty stuff in the gut for awhile. However, in the UK oats are dried out using glyphosate...a known carcinogen!

Feels like modern society makes it nearly impossible to not be exposed to harmful substances...so I hope you're successful.

gambiting2• 9 months ago

The whole point of glyphosate is that it deteriorates very very quickly, and your oats should contain exactly zero of it. Obviously that's the theory, I'd love someone to test it. But in US wheat is routinely dessicated with glyphosate so either their bread is giving everyone cancer, or the compound does actually break down as expected. Or maybe it's somewhere in between.

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.

jimnotgym5• 9 months ago

I have no connection to these people, except I have eaten their jumbo oats. They have been an organic farm since 1949. I doubt they use glyphosate, but you could ask them?

https://www.pimhill.com/

cassepipe2• 9 months ago

I thought glyphosate was only a danger for people applying it (something that's been denied for a long time) Also as far as I know it goes into the weeds it kills, not in the plant you want to keep (is your food) ? Else it would also die ?

hexbin010• 9 months ago

Flahavans are the best oats (£3/kg). ~200 year old Irish company

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...

anonu• 9 months ago

So I need to put something in my body to prevent other things in my body? I don't mean to be the party pooper but this is my first thought. Health conscious people care about plastics in their body and are probably shopping organic and what not. So you have a high hurdle to climb with any "modified" foods.

citizenpaul• 9 months ago

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andy99• 9 months ago

This reminds me a bit of a private group that did a big study (I thought in SFBA) looking at the amount of microplastics in different stuff, for example delivered food. Just thinking about it because of the startup he mentioned and I was wondering if it was them, but can’t find the article now. I know it was discussed at length here.

Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633

foresto• 9 months ago

I was just going to ask if this was it...

https://www.plasticlist.org/

...and then I saw your link. I'll leave this comment here for the convenience of others.

foofoo12• 9 months ago

This was lead poisoning. ... Nobody knew.

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.

ants_everywhere2• 9 months ago

Lead had been a known poison for nearly 2000 years when it was added to gasoline.

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.

jihadjihad• 9 months ago

Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".

davnicwil• 9 months ago

it's incredibly surprising to me that lead was added to gasoline specifically at all.

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?

vunderba• 9 months ago

That guy's entire wikipedia page is an almost surreal read. For introducing lead into gasoline and the proliferation of CFCs, he was termed a "one-man environmental disaster". His death is equally fascinating. He invented a mechanical device to help him out of bed because of his polio-related infirmity, and ended up getting strangled by it.

fuzzfactor• 9 months ago

The article doesn't mention it, but at some point the yellow paint on the pencils that young students often chew on would have likely been pigment having high lead content.

SuperNinKenDo• 9 months ago

When I was a baby we lived virtually directly under the Sydney Harvour Bridge, I got lead poisoning as a result of runoff from the bridge. The combination of leaded petrol and leaded paint runoff poisoned the soil in playgrounds and the area more generally.

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.

OgsyedIE• 9 months ago

Equally as large and interesting is the industry of targeting and subverting consumer watchdog groups. Wirecutter's infiltration and takeover is a fascinating example.

kragen7• 9 months ago

I was appalled to see that apparently Which? has a website funded by affiliate marketing links.

hackeman300• 9 months ago

Where can I read more about Wirecutter's infiltration? Disappointed to hear since I largely trusted their reviews

xnx• 9 months ago

Wirecutter's infiltration and takeover

Where can I find details on this?

Havoc• 9 months ago

One of those things where it’s important to make a concerted effort to limit risk.

…but then also to stop worrying after reasonable steps were taken because it’s an endless rabbit hole

noduerme5• 9 months ago

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale.

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.

hammock2• 9 months ago

Why are they even selling mercury thermometers for oral use when an alcohol one (the red liquid) does fine

noduerme5• 9 months ago

I wondered that as well, but they are. I've started to think there's an organized effort by a government with a lot of state-owned enterprises to actually dispose of toxic waste by shipping it to gullible American consumers. Not that it isn't also poisoning people there.

mrob2• 9 months ago

Mercury has higher thermal conductivity than alcohol. The temperature reading stabilizes faster with mercury.

LorenPechtel6• 9 months ago

The old mercury ones were a lot easier to read. And faster.

_DeadFred_2• 9 months ago

Amazon is straight up evil at this point. People have pointed out they are selling fake fuses that have most likely gotten people killed, Amazon has done nothing. I am sure the same is occurring across other product categories like your example.

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.

noduerme5• 9 months ago

> The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands

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.

ponector• 9 months ago

Why do you think mercury blob is going to the mouth?

Those are usually rectal thermometer, with 0.1°C precision or better. Also sometimes used to measure body temperature in armpits.

Cthulhu_4• 9 months ago

I've thought about that too, but in the end, price always wins - this is why the Amazons and Walmarts of the world have out-competed local small businesses.

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.

everdrive• 9 months ago

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.

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 changed

autoexec• 9 months ago

I've thought about that too, but in the end, price always wins - this is why the Amazons and Walmarts of the world have out-competed local small businesses.

The 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.

globular-toast• 9 months ago

Amazon is rather like the Silk Road[0] of old. You're buying cinnamon from some guy in Europe who knows not even the vague direction it came from, let alone what's in it or how it came to be. This could be considered irresponsible today, or it could be considered efficient, depending on your perspective.

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).

pjc504• 9 months ago

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale.

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.

ghtbircshotbe• 9 months ago

I'm convinced the major tobacco companies will do well if the government ever manages to crack down on sketchy and illegal vaping products and stores. But this seems very hard to do.

agumonkey• 9 months ago

Isn't this a new concept of this era ?

We profit from letting others be free to harm you but we cannot be held responsible.

disruptism ? platformism ?

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

Sameasitalwayswasism.

Consumer protection had a brief heyday, but is far from status quo in even the last century of history.

isolay• 9 months ago

I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like this.

By now the market has "matured" to pure profit orientation. Health or even survival are irrelevant. /s

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth.

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.

noduerme5• 9 months ago

In the photo I saw, the tip was metal and had a blob resembling an amalgam on it so it may not have been pure liquid mercury there.

LorenPechtel6• 9 months ago

It's inside the tip.

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.

Arainach• 9 months ago

Only a business with this as its core competency is capable of the breadth and depth required for this Herculean task.

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.

pnathan• 9 months ago

The solution here is the Government regulating and managing the situation. It has been recognized for a century - if not more - that the onus is on the State.

The FDA, FTC, EPA, etc should be involved here.

anon7000• 9 months ago

It’s true. It’s also great that we have companies that want to do better. All it takes is a board & executive who don’t care for public good, but only for short term profit, and the entire mission of the company goes up in flames. And since profit is essentially the only thing that executives & boards are allowed to care about, it’s essentially inevitable unless the company founders stay laser focused on their mission, never take on arbitrary investors, and even consider PBCs.

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.

mr_johnson22• 9 months ago

If the incentives of private business are what got us in this health crisis, why should private business be trusted to get us out of it?

k92943• 9 months ago

Incentives. I use consumerlab because trust is their product, if they break their trust once - they will ruin their business.

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”.

IlikeKitties• 9 months ago

All the exhaust fumes pooled and hung in the air there. And these were the 1970s: literally all the gasoline was leaded.1 This was lead poisoning. Over the years, the children were getting brain damage.

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.

avidiax• 9 months ago

The prisoner isn't a horrible human because he solves his dilemma by defecting.

tasuki2• 9 months ago

Disagreed.

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.

pjc504• 9 months ago

No, I'm fairly sure he is, and this is an important question for societies to inculcate in people.

weregiraffe• 9 months ago

What's worse, damage from lead or damage from constant obsession about lead?

garretraziel• 9 months ago

Damage from lead.

lkuty• 9 months ago

This raises the interesting point of finding a balance between knowing/searching and letting go when it comes to health. Lead is a major one but obession about health can lead to anxiety, stress. I think that finding the major factors that affect health is what matters (sunlight, sleep, walking, cooking with stainless steel, etc.) and letting go of all the minor details. This is an issue that has been close to my heart for years, and my perspective on it has changed over time. Anxiety can be a real problem.

anal_reactor• 9 months ago

At some point you're bound to reach the point of diminishing returns

lccerina2• 9 months ago

Damage from lead. The 'obsession' here is that the right level of lead in any product should be ZERO. There should be international pacts, like what was done for gases destroying the ozone layer, to remove lead entirely from products

pjc504• 9 months ago

Lead is actually dangerous. Arguably the panic from things which are .. much less well evidenced, shall we say, causes people to overlook the real problems.

gurghet• 9 months ago

i live in Europe and the public discourse around this is always very high and i don't think we have 1/10 of the problems in the article, but maybe I'm lulu

k92943• 9 months ago

I live in EU, and oh boy you are wrong. Same crap on the shelves, same crap on marketplaces, same supplements brands, etc etc (I live in Portugal).

coppsilgold3• 9 months ago

Bloodletting is a solution. Donate blood as frequently as they allow you. Plasma donation works even better (higher frequency) if you trust the machines and the process.

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.

4gotunameagain• 9 months ago

Source?

M95D• 9 months ago

2 millennia of bloodletting medical practice. /s

coppsilgold3• 9 months ago

Aside from the fact that dilution of blood is obviously dilution of any and all substances in the blood?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35394514/

kgabis• 9 months ago

missingdays• 9 months ago

What makes you think it's a solution?

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?

coppsilgold3• 9 months ago

Even by that logic you should still dilute your blood, because if you don't you will accumulate plastic faster...

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.

pjc504• 9 months ago

The solution to bioaccumulation is to give it to someone else?

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

Blood is less than 10% of your weight. Donating 100% every month (!) would only reduce your exposure by the same, a trivial amount in dosage variation.

rao-v• 9 months ago

The reality is that poison is dose dependent, and we’ve mostly identified all the dangerous things and their doses. That lead in the bottle and the formaldehyde in your cheap clothes is bad … but not in a way that will detectably cause you harm or impair your life

Cthulhu_4• 9 months ago

I'm pretty confident that thanks to us getting rid of a lot of stuff already (lead, etc), we're now more able to detect other stuff that is causing issues (like microplastics, although there was a lot less of that in the 70's)

LorenPechtel6• 9 months ago

The problem is the supply chain is now so compromised by many little players that pop up, sell cheap stuff, vanish.

tasuki2• 9 months ago

Don't forget the poisons we've known for ages and yet overconsume: sugar, alcohol, ...

lou1306• 9 months ago

Those are regulated, and sold to willing customers. On the other hand, people who buy paint do not want to get lead-poisoned, usually.

jimnotgym5• 9 months ago

And they are just waiting for the modern paint to be as good as the old lead paint was on exterior woodwork.

jimnotgym5• 9 months ago

Is the furniture I sit in every day made with harmful substances?

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

lccerina2• 9 months ago

"This will be a big business" No. It shouldn't be a "business", it should be laws that are enforced fast, education, public shaming of companies putting poison in their products. Volatile Organic compounds in paint were known to be poisonous since 17th century (see Bernardino Ramazzini's works). Just listen to the goddamn scientists for once. You can't solve a problem caused by capitalism corner cutting with more capitalism.

slhck2• 9 months ago

The Austrian consumer protection association has just released results on tests of headphones: https://vki.at/Presse/PA-Kopfhoerer-2025 (German article), and found that 40% contained possibly harmful chemicals, including the parts that touch your body.

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.

timr3• 9 months ago

That article is a classic example of a prevalent error in this line of commentary: indiscriminately taking a "possibly harmful chemical", translating it to a totally different context (say, touching it instead of eating it), and then assuming that any interaction with the chemical is therefore bad.

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.

slhck2• 9 months ago

Totally agree with you - the dermal exposure is a different pathway, and that could be more clearly mentioned. The fact that these materials are present are not automatically hazards (but they do state that!). I also wouldn't automatically assume that the products marked as red are not safe to use. For me it's just interesting to see that some manufacturers can do without, or less of those components.

Amezarak2• 9 months ago

Children eat and chew on lots of things you’d never imagine, even up into elementary and middle school years. A smaller number of adults do too.

BeFlatXIII2• 9 months ago

unless you're regularly eating your headphones

Bunnies everywhere put on notice.

6510• 9 months ago

I'm no nutritional expert but from what I understand: If you look at traditional food people ate very different around the world but by some miracle all of those traditional diets cover all angles of nutrition. It seems to suggest that in the long run only cultures who eat a complete diet survive. You can of course survive for a really long time with all kinds of deficiencies but apparently time will catch up. How this happens I don't know but it isn't actually important. The point I wanted to make is that poison isn't even required. Unless you have experimental success after perhaps thousands of years of trial and error we would have to actively monitor and adjust everything with an iron fist. Specially this idea that anything goes unless harm is proven needs to go. There is an enormous amount of low hanging fruit but to do the entire job entirely will be a humongous undertaking.

omgbear2• 9 months ago

I wonder how much this is causing the worldwide swing toward authoritarianism. Lead exposure can cause lower conscientiousness, lower agreeableness, and higher neuroticism.[1]

Especially considering the age of people who actually vote and who the politicians in power are (at least in the U.S.)

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8307752/

Thorrez• 9 months ago

Is lead exposure going up or down? I assume it's going down, because lead gasoline was banned, lead paint was banned, and the lead that was in the environment due to those 2 source is slowly being cleaned up.

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.

omgbear2• 9 months ago

Down a lot now, but likely peaked in the 70s -- Kids growing up then are likely 50-60 which are the higher turnout voting brackets.

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...

tim333• 9 months ago

Given almost anything can do something bad to you I've got a rule of thumb not to worry much about things unless they can quantify how many years they take off your life. There are still quite a lot of those around - smoking, air pollution and obesity being some of the top ones that can do >10 years. I'm not to bad on smoking and air pollution but could lose a pound or two. I figure central London has dropped from a couple of years off to maybe a couple of months over the time I've been around here.

benabbott• 9 months ago

Climate change seems to be a topic that's "OK" to be skeptical about because you can't see it right now, today, with your own eyes.

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.

fpsvogel• 9 months ago

In my experience, in the US, harmful chemicals in products are a lot more credible than climate change, to people who listen to the Right. An example that has been in the news: pregnant women taking Tylenol.

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”

tokioyoyo• 9 months ago

I'm curious, how many more years do we need to get decent data points to have a controller experiment between "people who min/maxed their health" vs an average person? Life expectancy here in Tokyo is 81/87 years (for men/women), and if constant chase for the "peak health" results in the same average... I'm not sure if it's worth it other than the general 80/20 rule of suggestions?

ahstilde• 9 months ago

I totally agree. I actually started Wyndly (https://www.wyndly.com/) because I realized I was poisoning myself with antihistamines every single day for my allergies. I did the research, and antihistamines are know to cause anxiety, depression, weight gain, and brain fog!

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.

antonchekhov• 9 months ago

A former coworker who was a serious gun enthusiast experienced dangerously high levels of lead in his bloodstream - he had chronic headaches and other bodily pains. He visited shooting ranges several times per week, and also packed (assembled? made? I'm not sure the nomenclature) his own bullets. His doctors believe he aspirated atomized lead particulate doing so much shooting practice, and/or bullet manufacture. He underwent chelation therapy (a protocol involving taking certain medications that bind to heavy metals in the blood, and the patient excretes it out via urination) to reduce lead levels.

LorenPechtel6• 9 months ago

The risk would mostly be from the range, not the reloading. The problem is bullets are intended to scrape pretty hard against the barrel to get them spinning. That inevitably causes lead dust and indoor ranges can be pretty dangerous because of it.

MetroWind• 9 months ago

This is probably the most 1st world thing I've read this year.

astrostl• 9 months ago

In Germany, there’s a popular nonprofit which tests consumer goods for safety and publishes the results.

In the USA too: https://www.consumerreports.org/about-us/what-we-do/

Poison, Poison Everywhere

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