As lawmakers around the world weigh bans of 'forever chemicals,” many manufacturers are pushing back, saying there often is no substitute.
How did we ever survive without them?
It’s not about survival. Manufactures are just letting people know if we ban these chemicals they will need to stop producing some products.
This is an excuse by the entire world to not spend money on solving the problem because they can just keep spending money the same way and not worry about it changing. This sounds like capitalism 101. They need to spend money is the problem their is no excuse for “there is nothing that can substitute it” aside from “I don’t want to spend money on trying to figure this out”. Their is always a solution to a problem you just need to you know… solve it.
Yet I guarantee you that in their R&D labs they’re already looking for alternatives at this point, all the while claiming to the public that it will be impossible to replace or result in inferior products (maybe it will, but hopefully it won’t be super noticeable - leaded gasoline’s octane numbers haven’t been matched cheaply but we can still drive just fine).
Exactly what I thought as soon as i read the title: “These chemicals can’t be replaced” “But did you look for substitues?” “Well… no.”
All it took to find a replacement for CFCs was to ban and discontinue them.Remember your high school chemistry class? What do you think they are going to use instead of fluorine? The thing that makes these compounds useful is exactly the thing that makes them “forever.”
Remember your high school chemistry class
Yes I do. I also remember my college chemistry classes. And my work in an industry R&D lab evaluating potential replacements for a fluorinated compound.
What do you think they are going to use instead of fluorine?
Something that’s not as good, but good enough. See leaded vs unleaded gasoline for a historical example of industry reacting to regulation. It’ll of course take time and money, and there may be limited use cases where there aren’t any conceivable replacements, but in a lot of cases these compounds are used as a catch-all because they work so well.
Which one would be your first choice?
PFAS are used in so many forms (solvents, polymers, etc.) that I think the replacement will be very dependent on the specific use case (and potentially other regulations on alternatives, particularly for solvents). I’m not knowledgeable about every field these compounds are used in and for privacy/NDA purposes I can’t talk about the specifics of the ones I worked with.
You are certainly much more knowledgeable about this than I.
In broad general terms:
Doesn’t the fluorine make them both effective and forever? Isn’t it difficult to create a lower energy state molecule than a compound of fluorine.
Is “forever” the problem?
The points you have brought up seem to be an issue with responsibile manufacturing more than the nature of the chemicals themselves. Seems like that should be addressed on a much wider discussion than just these particular compounds.
Doesn’t the fluorine make them both effective and forever? Isn’t it difficult to create a lower energy state molecule than a compound of fluorine.
For many applications, yes. Fluorinated compounds tend to be quite inert. There are definitely some applications where the compounds don’t need to be resistant to every type of chemical attack and you could use a more specialized compound that is generally less inert but performs similarly in whatever conditions you put it under.
Is “forever” the problem?
Forever is a big part of the problem, but it’s worth noting that if a compound is completely nontoxic then bioaccumulation doesn’t matter as much (though some nontoxic chemicals can increase the potency of other, toxic chemicals and cause problems that way: see this article)
The points you have brought up seem to be an issue with responsibile manufacturing more than the nature of the chemicals themselves. Seems like that should be addressed on a much wider discussion than just these particular compounds.
Yes. We need increased strictness on regulations and enforcement for these compounds and others because that’s the only way to make companies comply.
Nanomachines, son.
And big sheets of graphene and cold fusion and curing cancer.
It’s still nanomachines. How can you get sheets of graphene? Nanomachines. How do you solve cold fusion? Nanomachines. How do you cure cancer? Believe it or not, nanomachines.
“Just put the eggs in this pan and they flip themselves.”
These are critical chemistries that enable modern day life
Then maybe we need to examine “modern day life” with a more critical eye. Some sacrifices may need to be made, because they are worth being made.
There are also measures that lie between “ban” and “use freely”. If we cannot eliminate the use of these chemicals in chipmaking, then we need to reconsider the disposability of these chips, or we can even consider if less effective processes result in less damaging chemical use, and accept a bit of regression as a trade-off.
Who would have a problem with us returning to an average lifespan of 40 years?
My comment was about how if elimination of these materials is impossible, then we should figure out how best to reduce their usage in an acceptable manner.
Jumping straight to black-and-white “So you’d send us back to the dark ages?!?!?!” type of response is kinda wild.
not the people insisting on the chemicals, clearly.
You could replace most of this shit with glass, ceramic, cardboard, and some cooking oil to replace those non stick cooking appliances
And yet somehow we survived thousands of Years without them.
I am so not understanding all the comments on this post that are literally defending their right to be given cancer by large corporations.
Wtf are the responses to this comment? “No, I like being poisoned for profit!” Jfc.
It’s just more expensive to make a new substitute and stop selling the toxic shit you still have in storage with no way of getting rid of it. So regulation has to lead the way…otherwise there is no incentive to stop. How about letting THEM come up with a way of removing the chemicals they already put into the environment first, before giving them the next free ticket to pollute.
I support this approach. Any company manufacturing products which are not readily biodegradable must put in place a scheme to capture and render that product inert before they’re allowed to sell it.
New type of plastic that can’t be recycled? Better figure out a recycling process and sort out the logistics of implementing that process wherever you intend to sell it.
Chemicals in your cleaning agent that don’t break down harmlessly after a reasonable time frame? Either re-engineer your chemicals until they do, or develop a process to prevent them ending up in the waterways.
Can’t do that? You arent manufacturing it.
The article opens by saying something totally different than the above summary. The point is that it’s difficult to replace a lot of these chemicals, not that there isn’t any substitute.
can’t be replaced… By something that works as well, is as cheap and most importantly : makes them as much money.
Were without these chemicals before, we can so again.
why would we replace them? they’re “forever”.
