[HN Gopher] The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into ...
___________________________________________________________________
The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into "sacrifice
zones"
Author : worstestes
Score : 229 points
Date : 2021-11-11 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Some anecdotes as someone who lived near one of these locations
| growing up (fortunately about 30 mi away)
|
| 1) Every now and then, our entire town would smell terrible,
| presumably from the winds carrying the emissions to us
|
| 2) A friend who moved here during my high school had to move away
| since his whole family suffered from asthma and it was made much
| noticeably worse here
|
| 3) Heard a couple huge explosions during my lifetime from these
| refineries sadly.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Californians have watered down the phrase 'cancer-causing' so
| much that probably nobody cares! I guess being down-wind of a
| Starbucks counts as being in a sacrifice zone according to
| Californian regulations!
| frazbin wrote:
| Yep, California has raised the bar, and to do so it had to take
| risks. In particular, it risked looking silly-- and in penis-
| politics looking silly in front of your opponents is an
| existential risk. The good news is, some of these risks paid
| off and became national standards. So, thanks to California,
| you are poisoned a little less every day.
|
| Speaking personally: fuck you for making fun of that effort!
| ericd wrote:
| Cmon, prop 65 is terribly implemented, and so the results are
| absurd. It'd be like if your software's logging just sent
| "there's an error" over and over via email to the whole team
| with no more details. Not even time stamps.
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Is it not a good idea to first ask for clarifications, when
| there is a doubt about one's message?
|
| If the labels of danger are without some sort of
| quantification, there is a fault.
| function_seven wrote:
| I think parent is referring to the useless Prop 65 warnings
| that are plastered on everything. They're so ubiquitous as to
| be completely meaningless. No sense of scale or relative
| risk. The coffee carries the same warning as the jug of
| pesticide you spray on your fruit trees. Same warning is on
| an Ethernet cable as is on a can of paint.
|
| The risk posed by these different items varies wildly, but
| they're all treated the same from a warning label
| perspective. And once you realize benign items get the label,
| you start to ignore it wherever you see it.
|
| What California did for air quality is fantastic. I'm proud
| of my state for its leadership on that and related things.
| But that doesn't excuse the failure of Prop 65 warnings.
| They're worse than just "silly". They dilute real warnings
| and cause people to ignore the whole lot.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| That's the equivalent of software monitoring alerts that
| engineers can't do anything to fix. Alert!
| A new user has joined. Alert! A user has logged
| in 47,000 times in the last minute
|
| The second gets ignored because of the flood of the first
| kind of message. It's called Attention Fatigue and policies
| often don't take the effect seriously enough.
|
| Better would be a warning with relative danger. Something
| like a how-cooked-is-your-goose measure: rare, mid-rare,
| medium, medium-well, well done, charcoal.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Don't know why you've chosen to use personal abuse? That's
| against the site guidelines here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html please don't
| do that.
|
| I'm not making fun of it - I'm saying it's actively harmful
| because when people now see articles like this and read
| 'cancer-causing' they'll think 'like Starbucks coffee, so I'm
| happy with that risk - not a problem'.
| nawgz wrote:
| > when people now see articles like this and read 'cancer-
| causing' they'll think 'like Starbucks coffee, so I'm happy
| with that risk - not a problem'.
|
| Well, I can think of multiple site guidelines I see
| violated here too.
|
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us
| something.
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| Really, it'd be a compliment to call your comments facile.
| This article has as an opening graphic a stark
| juxtaposition of harsh industry and children attending
| school, which it then proceeds to discuss pretty
| thoroughly. It is difficult to believe you think the
| discussion there is about risks analogous to drinking a cup
| of coffee.
| fundad wrote:
| Every post is going to attract someone "just asking
| questions" about whether a normal, serious, hypothetical
| person would immediately be thinking about right-wing
| talking points instead of thinking about health and
| suffering.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It is difficult to believe you think the discussion
| there is about risks analogous to drinking a cup of
| coffee.
|
| I don't think that! And that's the point - same warning,
| but not the same risk.
| nawgz wrote:
| If you think the behavior of people who do not read the
| article will be unchanged by yet another discussion of
| cancer, I think you will perhaps be surprised to learn
| that people who don't care about privacy don't care about
| yet another discussion of government overreach and people
| who don't care about politics remain unbothered by news
| articles decrying fascism or communism.
|
| The article was quite interesting, and showed some very
| good points. When you use words like "when people now see
| articles like this" to completely dismiss its very point,
| it ceases to feel like good faith discussion of anything
| besides some personal agenda you related to an article
| keyword.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > When you use words like "when people now see articles
| like this" to completely dismiss its very point
|
| I think you're misreading my comments.
|
| I'm not dismissing the article. It's the opposite. I'm
| saying that my fear is that other people will
| unfortunately dismiss the article, due to fatigue of
| being warned that things cause cancer.
| nawgz wrote:
| You are strongly whitewashing your own comments. Your
| first comment - as mentioned re: personal agendas - was
| about 75% dedicated to to railing against California. The
| other 25% was where you expressed your opinion of the
| article: "probably nobody cares"
|
| Please write more carefully if you mean what you say when
| pressed, because these thoughts are not without merit,
| but the top level comment was completely off-topic and
| derogatory to the article and has scarcely spawned a
| useful discussion.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > derogatory to the article
|
| I'm really not sure how you managed to take that away
| from the top level comment! I didn't say anything
| derogatory about it if you re-read it. I think you're
| possibly bringing in some kind of preconception.
|
| The article is important but its impact is watered down
| by people making 'cancer-causing' a daily warning. That
| was the point.
| rhacker wrote:
| I would remove the fu stuff. But I appreciate your
| appreciation of prop 65. Even if tons of products still have
| the warning, the amount of lead in various things has dropped
| significantly since implemented.
| infecto wrote:
| I wish your comment was the parent comment. It would be
| nice to understand what the benefits are because we all
| know about the silly cancer warnings in Starbucks.
| kybishop wrote:
| Do you have evidence to back up this claim? I'm aware CA puts
| many warning stickers on various products... but isn't it
| possible that profit-seeking corporations are, in fact, using
| cancer-causing materials simply because they're cheaper?
| Tagbert wrote:
| CA looks a lot like the boy who cried "wolf".
|
| When the risk is infinitesimal and the warning placed on so
| many items, what is the value of that warning?
| azinman2 wrote:
| What makes you think the risk is infinitesimal?
|
| I think the reality is we have so many terrible chemicals
| all around us that it feels like an over reaction, when
| it's actually the exact opposite -- manufacturers have made
| many a deal with the devil.
| jessriedel wrote:
| The point isn't that the amount of cancer caused is literally
| zero. Just by chance, everything will have _some_ (generally
| infinitesimal) effect on cancer, and often it will be
| positive. The question is whether "causes cancer" is being
| applied to products that cause amounts of cancer that are so
| small that it's not worth warning people about. That consumer
| products and businesses are covered in these warning and few
| people take them seriously is prima facie evidence that this
| is the case, but you'd have to dig into the numbers to be
| sure.
|
| For instance, Wikipedia:
|
| > The requirements apply to amounts above what would present
| a 1-in-100,000 risk of cancer assuming lifetime exposure (for
| carcinogens)
|
| Using the standard ~$5M statistical value of life, this mean
| that you need to label a product if it is estimated to impose
| the equivalent of $50 in costs if someone is regularly
| exposed to the chemical over an entire lifetime. I'm not sure
| what frequency of exposure is being assumed here, but naively
| that means that if I use the product once a week, it requires
| notification of about 2 cents worth of harm per usage.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| No--it's based on the risk to someone who uses it a lot.
| Even if it's a product they're not going to use a lot.
| maxk42 wrote:
| They're not labeling things that are particularly known to be
| harmful. CA Prop 65 warnings are on all rice, coffee, and
| multi-tenant garages. When you begin labeling things that
| common and benign as "cancer-causing" people learn to tune it
| out. Pretty sure rice, coffee, and/or multi-tenant garages
| are found pretty much everywhere.
| rezendi wrote:
| https://www.popsci.com/california-coffee-cancer-warning/
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This article is not very convincing. I mean sure, the thing
| about coffee was over the top, but they also stopped
| requiring that one.
|
| Meanwhile the other examples it uses are that you have to
| be warned when you're being exposed to things like diesel
| exhaust. Which, um, actually does cause cancer.
| rezendi wrote:
| Wood dust on furniture? The prospect of alcohol in hotel
| rooms? Tiffany lamps? Seriously?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| In many cases it's natural risk, not the products at all.
|
| Everything has some amount of lead back from the days when it
| was used recklessly. Everything has some amount of mercury
| that's still going up smokestacks. (Now we catch most of it--
| not all of it!) Plants pick up some arsenic from the soil--
| for medical reasons I eat a lot of rice and it's enough of an
| issue I make sure to buy rice grown in low-arsenic areas.
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| People don't seem to change their behaviour due to those
| warnings. Nobody's going into a coffee shop, seeing that
| warning sticker and thinking 'ah whoops better get out of
| here' are they? The warning 'cancer-causing' has no effect.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This works, if you have 20 coffee shops, and one of them
| has "there's asbestos in this building" warning.
|
| If you have warnings literally everywhere, for minor
| things, that noone really cares about, because the risks
| are miniscule, people will start ignoring even the
| dangerous but identical-looking signs. "this item causes
| cancer" ... are we talking about asbestos, or are we
| talking about a roasted potato? If the labels are the same,
| people stop noticing them.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I was going to suggest that asbestos was a bad example,
| because, in most cases, as long as it's left undisturbed,
| it's completely safe. The only risk from asbestos is from
| breathing it into one's lungs. If it's not in the air,
| it's not a problem.
|
| But, then I thought: hmm... maybe his is a _great_
| example. People are _terrible_ at assessing risks. The
| word 'asbestos' is likely to cause a greater reaction
| than is warranted. It's the opposite side of the coin
| from peoples' reactions to those prop 65 signs.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| But note the very high cancer rates amongst those who
| were dealing with the twin towers rubble.
| njarboe wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but fear of asbestos is also
| another danger that has been highly exaggerated. Asbestos
| is only dangerous if it is particularized and inhaled in
| high quantities over a period of time. Men that changed
| breaks that had asbestos in them and thus lots of
| asbestos dust or men who worked on installing asbestos
| pipes and were cutting them all the time, were the ones
| who got cancer (or their wives who washed their dusty
| clothes). The fear of asbestos objects or buildings that
| have, say asbestos insulation on pipes in the basement,
| is not reasonable and another example of overblown fear
| that probably cost the US a hundreds of billions dollars
| (wild guess) that could have been spent much more
| productively on something else.
| csee wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for this statement?
|
| I have changed my behavior in response to health info on
| labels, so this is anecdotal evidence against your
| assertion.
|
| PR campaigns have been known to work, e.g. alcohol in
| Russia in the 90s.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Do you have any evidence for this statement?
|
| The fact that every coffee shop in California is still
| open, despite people being warned for years that they
| sell products that cause cancer. The vast majority of
| people clearly do not care about the warning.
|
| And what do you think _is_ the benefit of putting
| unsupported warnings on things? Do you think it 's
| actively beneficial? Do you think it's harmless? If it's
| beneficial or harmless we might as well go ahead and put
| a warning label on absolutely everything regardless. Then
| how do we react to this linked article? We'd ignore it.
|
| If you're the one who wants warning labels on things that
| don't need warning about then you justify _that_
| position!
| ziddoap wrote:
| It's not clear to me if you're arguing just about
| warnings on coffee or if you're arguing that _all_
| warning labels are useless.
|
| > _The fact that every coffee shop in California is still
| open, despite people being warned for years that they
| sell products that cause cancer. The vast majority of
| people clearly do not care about the warning._
|
| Or they care, but have balanced the risks vs. their
| enjoyment of coffee. But they may see a warning on, for
| example, olive oil which contains lead, and decide to buy
| another product.
|
| > _putting unsupported warnings on things?_
|
| What do you mean by unsupported here? As in, not
| supported by science? Or by the people? Because I'm
| pretty sure it's well supported by science that certain
| products are carcinogenic and that consuming them,
| unsurprisingly, isn't very good. We can argue about what
| thresholds constitute a tangible risk, for sure, but
| either way the fact that some things cause cancer is
| surely considered "supported".
|
| > _that don 't need warning about_
|
| Same question -- just referring to coffee or all labels
| on everything? I agree with this if you're just referring
| to coffee, but there are certainly labels that I _do_ pay
| attention to and consider a warning useful.
|
| I think there's a happy middle-ground here. If my
| favorite juice has lead, I want to know. If my favorite
| coffee shop has a 1 in 10,000,000 of causing cancer, I
| probably don't need the warning each day.
| zardo wrote:
| The problem I see with these labels is they lack
| specificity. A sticker on the visor in a new car says
| this vehicle contains chemicals that cause cancer and /or
| birth defects. I know the paint does, as do all the
| fluids.
|
| What about the steering wheel and the arm rests?
|
| My pen doesn't have a warning, is that because the
| manufacturer chooses to consider exposure through skin
| contact only, but chewing on it is actually a sizeable
| risk?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem isn't labels in general. It's that Prop 65
| went way too far, it was a case of the boy crying wolf
| for every rodent walking around.
| csee wrote:
| I agreed with that, I was talking about labels in the
| abstract but they can definitely be put to bad use.
| californical wrote:
| I almost bought olive oil, then noticed the California
| warning sticker that it contained lead, and didn't buy it -
| I don't see that on all olive oil. So it does make a
| difference sometimes
| azinman2 wrote:
| I absolutely pay attention to Prop 65 when I buy products
| and will find alternatives. I also try to find out _why_
| there's a prop 65 warning and then decide how much I care
| (e.g. if an SSD has it, I don't care because I know I'm
| handling it so little and it shouldn't be offgasing
| anything; where as with food or things I'm always touching,
| then I care very much).
| djbusby wrote:
| Worked (sorta) for tobacco.
| zbrozek wrote:
| My social circle is in CA. None of us pay any attention
| whatsoever to prop65 labels. They're about as useful as any
| other type of product or business labeling: there's so much
| of it that it's just visual noise that's long-ago been
| brainfiltered out of existence.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| They are interesting to the interested. Like <<any other
| ... labeling>>.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The warning 'cancer-causing' has no effect.
|
| Devil's advocate, it has an effect on some minority of
| people. Then the company loses sales and has the incentive
| to stop using the carcinogen if possible.
|
| Your lifetime risk of getting cancer from that thing might
| have been one in a thousand, so you don't really care, but
| the company has ten million customers and getting them to
| change prevents 10,000 cancers.
|
| This is a pretty good alternative to banning the thing.
| Because if there _is_ a reasonable way to stop using the
| carcinogen, you don 't want to be the company that has the
| cancer warning when your competitors don't. But if there
| isn't, maybe the risk is low enough that people make an
| informed choice to take the risk for the benefit of the
| thing with no better alternative, and that's fine too.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| IIRC, after a few years of lawsuits against the state, it was
| decided that coffee beans no longer require a prop 65 warning
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| Isn't the entire USA a "sacrifice zone"?
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Interesting article, and those are some fantastic infographics
| and associated embedded video clips.
|
| ProPublica knows how to present data.
| stuaxo wrote:
| The results of almost unabated regulator capture for decades.
|
| Let's hope shining light on this brings pressure for change.
| kaiju0 wrote:
| This is a pretty typical growth pattern. Industrial zone
| establishes and city is set far away in a safe area. City expands
| and resident need cheap housing. The cheap housing is built near
| the industrial zone as that is how economic forces work. People
| then see this and say they built industrial next to the poor
| people when the opposite occurred. Now the industry is giving
| cancer to poor people and needs to be punished. Who is right and
| who is wrong?
| dd36 wrote:
| Property rights. If the adjacent property is unsafe due to your
| actions, you should pay to fix the problem.
| parineum wrote:
| If someone buys the adjacent property after you've made it
| unsafe without breaking any laws, who pays?
| 8note wrote:
| I'd say still you.
|
| That wasn't your property to make unsafe. If it's your own
| property that you've made unsafe, then sell it, I'd
| consider it on the buyer, unless you hid that it was unsafe
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _If it 's your own property that you've made unsafe, then
| sell it, I'd consider it on the buyer, unless you hid
| that it was unsafe._
|
| No one should be able to build houses or establish
| habitations on poisonous and polluted area. You can sell
| poisonous land to someone else but anyone owning
| poisonous land needs to take precautions to keep people
| off.
|
| It's like one should be able to sell spoiled food (to
| eat) or lead contaminated toys. Warning people here isn't
| enough because some people will be foolish or desperate.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| For someone to buy it someone has to sell it, no?
|
| The adjacent property is already owned and already being
| spoiled.
| SinParadise wrote:
| The welfare of persons is always in the right.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > City expands and resident need cheap housing. The cheap
| housing is built near the industrial zone as that is how
| economic forces work.
|
| In cities like Mobile, Alabama, the opposite is usually
| true[1]: people already lived in those areas, but companies
| (and local governments) don't consider their health
| sufficiently important. I'll leave it up to you to infer why
| that is.
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2018/jan/26/africatown-s...
| kube-system wrote:
| Agreed. It's the same market forces, though, just in reverse.
| Industrial businesses don't want to buy land at Park Avenue
| prices.
| mazamats wrote:
| > Who is right and who is wrong?
|
| In Alabama it would the industrial sector that is in the
| wrong.
|
| Nobody wants to pay for more expensive land, but we should
| force them to via regulation if they are going to spread
| cancer in the air.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The largest new industrial facility in West Virginia, Rockwool
| in Ranson, is permitted as a top ten polluter for formaldehyde
| in the entire United States and was built 1,300 feet from an
| existing elementary school just last year.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Who do you think is setting up these neighbourhoods? A lot of
| times it's the industrial companies as well looking to
| diversify their investments.
|
| But not always, let's not paint them with the same brush. Zoom
| out on the problem broader.
|
| Why are industrial companies polluting land that they don't
| own? Well, because this was all established in an age when we
| considered pollution out of sight and out of mind. If it's not
| an oil barrel lying in a ditch, but some happy vapor going out
| into the atmosphere, who cares?
|
| So the lack of government regulation of pollution on land not
| owned by the companies is the problem.
|
| In 21st century sensibilities about externalities, an
| industrial plant should not be able to pollute land it doesn't
| own. And if there is no way to avoid that, the government
| should set it up as an isolation zone not zoned for
| residential, and force the company to price that into their
| economics.
|
| By the way this is what the rest of the developed world does.
| The US, with it's obsession with profits, and deregulation, and
| "letting the free market" decide doesn't, and now has the worst
| correlation between health outcomes and socioeconomic class of
| any developed country.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people ... Who is
| right and who is wrong?
|
| Are you suggesting that this question is somehow hard to
| answer? I don't think it is.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people and needs to
| be punished. Who is right and who is wrong?
|
| Yeah, if your industrial process causes cancer you need to re-
| engineer the process to be safer and polluting less, even if
| you were there first.
| chrismeller wrote:
| Sorry, but that seems a bit ignorant. A lot of the things we
| rely on every day have toxic byproducts.
|
| I'm not saying this is good, but by your logic you should
| give up your car because someone moved in to the lot next to
| you and built a house.
| dd36 wrote:
| If your car is damaging property that's not yours, then
| absolutely!
| vineyardmike wrote:
| There is a difference between a person driving a car, and a
| factory spewing off a criminally high level of carcinogenic
| chemicals.
|
| > A lot of the things we rely on every day have toxic
| byproducts
|
| And we should stop and fix that. Why do we accept this as
| ok?
|
| > by your logic you should give up your car because someone
| moved in to the lot next to you and built a house.
|
| My logic says we should phase out cars that we know kill
| people. Maybe build cars that use a new, less-polluting
| method of pollution. Like EV! We solved this issue with
| cars, maybe Exxon should solve their issue with petroleum.
| riversflow wrote:
| >And we should stop and fix that.
|
| By exporting it to a poorer country? Because that's what
| happens.
| azinman2 wrote:
| That happens because the incentives and supply chain
| machinery allow it to. Externalities are never priced in
| regardless of where things are made. Price in
| externalities, regardless of origin, and things would
| change. That's just one example of a potential solution,
| and one that many are trying to do with carbon
| taxes/credits.
| macintux wrote:
| That seems to be the fatal trap we're in: government can
| compensate for the fact that capitalism is effectively
| unable to price in externalities, but the big winners
| from capitalism have the resources to simultaneously
| lobby government for less regulation and persuade voters
| that government is evil.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't see any other method of economy / government
| solving either. USSR hid all kinds of dangers (including
| Chernobyl), China barely is reacting to climate change
| and notoriously has sacrificed its people for economic
| gain, etc.
|
| The value structures of how much to care for any one
| person are different independent of government.
| Individual versus collective shows itself in both
| democratic capitalist governments on both sides, and now
| with market reforms so does communism.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| The "optimal" level of pollution is not zero. While there
| may be exceptions to individuals, to society as a whole,
| the benefits of an activity may very outweigh the costs.
| This is true of every human endeavor. There are always
| costs. The question is whether they are worth it.
| sseagull wrote:
| > A lot of the things we rely on every day have toxic
| byproducts And we should stop and fix that. Why do we
| accept this as ok?
|
| Of course. But it is not always easy. You can't always
| wave your hand and make non-harmful alternatives.
| Sometimes it is due to incentives, but also sometimes it
| is really just chemistry or physics.
|
| See the "tin whisker" phenomenon when they took lead out
| of solder.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Sometimes it is due to incentives,
|
| We can fix those. If you could sue a chemical plant (or
| it's engineers!) that design/implement carcinogenic
| pollution, i bet the incentives get better fast.
|
| > but also sometimes it is really just chemistry or
| physics. >You can't always wave your hand and make non-
| harmful alternatives
|
| I think we can more often then we give it credit for.
| Especially if there was more money flowing into R&D, and
| more regulatory efforts.
|
| > See the "tin whisker" phenomenon when they took lead
| out of solder.
|
| I've never heard of this and I buy tons of electronics.
| Seems like industry incentives took care of this. Now we
| have no lead... and i can still buy iPhones whenever i
| want.
|
| Why do we accept destruction in our society? Why don't we
| push for better? Nothing has to be the way it is if we
| don't want it to be.
| sseagull wrote:
| > Especially if there was more money flowing into R&D,
| and more regulatory efforts.
|
| You won't hear any argument from me there.
|
| To put it into perspective, the annual budget of the
| entire (US) National Science Foundation is $8 billion.
| Now compare that the revenue or even profit of google,
| apple, etc.
| belltaco wrote:
| It's more like installing a catalytic converter on your
| car. Or adding a muffler.
|
| The article says the factory does not have an ethylene
| oxide scrubber installed.
| friedman23 wrote:
| The engineers didn't set out to create processes that
| resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not helpful
| at all.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The engineers have a responsibility to manage toxic
| byproducts their processes give off.
| woodruffw wrote:
| No, but they _did_ set out to create processes that fit
| into an economic envelope with forces (unchecked
| externalities) that _encourage_ pollution. The engineers
| aren 't evil people, but the incentive system that they
| participate in allows them to be more _myopic_ than it
| ought to.
| klyrs wrote:
| Engineers don't set out to design a bridge that will
| collapse, either, but folks still want them to be held to
| account when it happens; folks still expect bridge failures
| to result in root cause analysis and an update to standard
| practices after the cause is understood.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > The engineers didn't set out to create processes that
| resulted in toxic by-products, your statement is not
| helpful at all.
|
| if the engineers did not set out to create a process free
| from polluting carcinogens, then they did something wrong.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When you have a campfire (or fire in your fireplace), you
| are releasing polluting carcinogens. When you heat olive
| oil to the smoke point, you are releasing carcinogens.
| If/when you do those things, are you also doing something
| wrong?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Exactly. My former employer had repeated battles with the
| EPA over his supposed refusal to improve emissions. Never
| mind that we had already done everything technologically
| feasible, they only saw the pattern of improvement and
| then stopping. And they kept comparing us to a competitor
| that we kept telling them had to be faking the numbers.
| Took them 10 years to figure out we were right--and we
| spent more on compliance than their penalty when their
| non-compliance was finally discovered.
|
| Other than mixing our own colors everything involved was
| available at the local hardware store. We were simply
| staining wood, the issue was the solvent evaporating
| while drying.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > we spent more on compliance than their penalty
|
| Sounds like a failing over EPA penalty, not that we
| should allow pollution! Why should we as a society allow
| large scale pollution to poison our world without
| containment?
| 8note wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Dont bring your olive oil to the smoke point
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > When you have a fire in your fireplace, you are
| releasing polluting carcinogens. When you do that, are
| you also doing something wrong?
|
| Yes.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51581817
|
| https://www.express.co.uk/life-
| style/property/1430579/wood-b...
|
| For the reasons that you set out. It's fairly
| straightforward.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > If/when you do those things, are you also doing
| something wrong?
|
| Its hard to say you're doing something "right" by
| releasing carcinogens. But scale is important here. Its
| hard to really conflate burning olive oil in your kitchen
| with oil refining.
| woodruffw wrote:
| It is relatively easy, from my vantage point, to see
| dividing lines between "doing something bad for your own
| health," "doing something bad for your health and those
| in your physical and emotional circles," and "doing
| something bad for the health of an entire city, country,
| or region." It can be the case for _each_ of these to be
| wrong, in different ways, without confounding or
| deflating the other cases.
| tux3 wrote:
| Yes, except scale makes all the difference.
|
| If you burn a tire, you're polluting and releasing toxic
| fumes around. But one burnt tire doesn't affect the
| neighborhood.
|
| Industry is not negligible. At larger scale toxic waste
| hurts a lot more people, of course it does! The campfire
| whataboutism is a bit silly in comparison.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Each one of us burning one tire is a large scale toxic
| waste issue. Same thing with wood fires.
| agonmon wrote:
| Yes. If you care about the surrounding people's health.
| lettergram wrote:
| Gonna have to side with city zoning being the wrong party here.
| It's really the people who represent the tax base that should
| be protecting said tax base.
| [deleted]
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Yep, a failure on the part of the beaurocrats to deny the
| zoning changes.
| zardo wrote:
| Yeah we can safely assume that the chemical plant didn't
| exert any political influence whatsoever.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Houston is imfamous for not having zoning. That's how you
| get an industrial plant next to a school next to a mall
| next to housing next to a cattle feed lot.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Given how zoning utterly ratfucked half the west coast
| into being all single-family hellscapes; I'm not inclined
| to say Houston should start having American-style zoning
| codes. Zoning goes _way beyond_ safety regulation and
| includes all sorts of things that should _never_ have
| been brought under democratic control. If we want to keep
| housing from being built next to polluting factories,
| then that should be the EPA 's job[0] to enforce.
|
| [0] or local state equivalents
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| That completely lets the companies off the hook for
| dangerous and unnecessary pollution. Even if nobody was
| around, they should have an ethylene oxide scrubber. That
| is a major source of teratogenic emissions per the article.
|
| Also, it strikes me as extremely speculative on your part
| that this is a zoning issue. How do you know that these
| plants didn't shift product mixes or expand after there
| were established communities nearby, or that the companies
| provided incorrect information to regulators? Unless you
| want to fund armies of scientists for the regulator to
| validate the truth of claims made on submissions then you
| have to blame the companies that submit false data. That
| seems far more likely than your assumption.
| lettergram wrote:
| I'm responding to a post which mentioned zoning issues.
| Generally, this is an article about "sacrifice zones" -
| I'm confused.
|
| Putting zoning aside, companies have no motives outside
| of growth and profit. That's why governments exist to
| protect the population they represent. From people,
| companies, foreign invaders, etc.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Not even profit these days, just growth. For-market-
| capitalization companies, profits are just to look good
| on the balance sheet, what you want is revenues, really.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people and needs to
| be punished. Who is right and who is wrong?_
|
| This argument confuses policy and morality and somehow implies
| we should ignore both.
|
| Morally, if you spew chemicals you know are going to cause
| significant excess deaths, you will have to live with yourself
| and myself and many people will think little of you.
|
| Legality, if you spew an otherwise unknown chemical that you
| happen to know is quite toxic, you'll be liable. If you stay
| with EPA guidelines but happen to know this is going to kill or
| injure significant number, you only have public perceptions and
| your own conscious to answer for.
|
| Policy wise, the EPA should impose regulations that make all
| neighborhoods reasonably safe. Moreover, I suggest structuring
| the regulation process to incentivize creating compliant
| processes rather than in terms of after-the-fact punishments.
| (I've heard a variety of contrasts between the US and Europe,
| where despite the US very "pro-capitalist", the regulatory
| paradigm is entirely adversarial).
| dantheman wrote:
| It's the same when people move next to the airport and then
| complain about noise.
|
| In general this can be solved with an extension of property
| rights, the industrial zone/airport/music venue etc can own the
| rights to "pollute" the neighboring areas, much like buying air
| rights in a city. Then it's clear when you purchase / rent /
| what level of noise / pollution you can expect.
|
| This allows market forces to work, if after a certain time the
| city is bigger and that land is more valuable for quality
| housing then they can buy the rights from the polluter and shut
| it down.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| lmao this is so fucking stupid, "let's NFT pollution then
| it's poor people's fault for not buying a seat at the dao for
| deciding what chemicals are in their air"
|
| Free market cultist are so weird
| [deleted]
| francisofascii wrote:
| The right to pollute should never be granted in perpetuity.
| If anything, it should be a recurring cost that increases or
| decreases based on the how much polluting is occurring. That
| way the markets work in incentivizing less polluting.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup. For the most part I would like to see current
| pollution regulations tossed wholesale.
|
| Instead, put a price tag on each pollutant. The charge is
| applied at the point in the supply chain where the
| pollutant is created or extracted and is rebated to anyone
| who destroys the pollutant (although they may be charged
| for other pollutants created in the process.) Think of the
| oft-proposed carbon tax, just much, much broader.
| drawqrtz wrote:
| In an ideal world this would be a great solution, but on
| earth I think this would invite a whole host of
| corruption, similar to the carbon offset trading. Not
| combating the problem but making everyone richer.
| boringg wrote:
| This is interesting and far too progressive for any of the
| cities to regulate at this time (or at any point in the
| past). This does sound like the right way to permit new
| industrial areas / processes. Though I imagine it might be
| difficult to pull off. Grandfathered industries would have
| such a huge advantage.
| convolvatron wrote:
| aren't you assuming we spend the money to adequately track
| the problem and hold the correct people responsible? that's
| certainly not the case now in the US. maybe you can fix that
| by creating a market somehow?
| boringg wrote:
| I think they way you described was a bit harsh. That said this
| is a serious challenge for industry that have large footprints
| and health risks to the community. In the electric markets
| there are lots of power plants that were originally far from
| communities but then housing spread and fell into the catchment
| areas.
|
| Going forward wouldn't it make sense to zone an entire area to
| not be allowed to build for residential purposes (essentially a
| buffer around the industrial zones)?
|
| It feels like its a grey area of responsibility etc. For
| industrial processes that are known to be highly toxic it would
| fall on the industrials but as we find out more information
| around toxicity and impacts ( _which it feels like more is
| coming to light all the time_ ) it will require some deft
| navigating.
| pirate787 wrote:
| You're underestimating the ruthless disregard most large
| industrial producers have for the communities where they
| locate. These companies are led by sociopaths and fools.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I would still blame the industrial zone in this case. If it is
| unsafe to live within 5 miles of the plant they should own all
| land within 5 miles of the plant.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the Clear Lake area of Houston in the
| 90s and 00s, I can tell you that the La Porte and Deer Park
| areas were bad, but weren't _this_ bad. People lived in the
| surrounding areas before some of those plants ramped up.
|
| It isn't always one way or the other.
|
| As someone who is seeing more and more how irreversible so much
| of our environmental damage is these days, I am leaning on the
| plant owners being responsible, not the schoolchildren who are
| getting rolled a 1:20,000 chance of cancer.
|
| Perhaps, knowing how much pollution affects surrounding areas,
| we should force such chemical plants to purchase all the land
| around them that will be affected to a certain extent.
| Internalize the costs of their damage to the community, and
| prevent others from being exposed to it.
| [deleted]
| makotech222 wrote:
| That's the beauty of capitalism: no one is at fault! no one can
| be sued! Its the system's fault and there's nothing we can do;
| VOTE!
| hhaha88 wrote:
| Why debate right and wrong and not simply make it an
| engineering problem to let people work on?
|
| Why not make that our political discourse? We stop the world at
| work to solve problems in revenue generation.
|
| Somehow this has to be mired in political speak.
|
| Letting figurative power thrive while squashing people is good
| business.
| NittLion78 wrote:
| As I've said for years, any time you see a glittering urban core
| full of glass towers, steel bridges, and classic old stone
| architecture, somewhere there's a Mordor nearby that made all
| that happen.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Eh, not really.
|
| Boston area has no big chemical/hard industrial industry, and
| nothing on that map. Neither does seattle (but the map shows
| some small process in areaa). Id wager a lot of modern
| "intellectual" cities (where knowledge worker industries
| dominate) can be devoid of such processes. Tourism cities too -
| eg, Vegas and Miami don't have such a history and their maps
| are clean.
|
| Obviously SFBay is a notable exception to the knowledge-worker
| idea, but SV was founded on horribly toxic silicon refining
| which, while mostly gone, has a terrible history of poisoning
| the ground.
| scottyah wrote:
| All that stuff is still being made and polluting, "mordor" is
| just further away.
| mazamats wrote:
| Isn't that the whole point? To keep it away from urban
| populations?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Then its not really "nearby" is it? Its another city,
| another nation, and not really related to that city at all?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think this is a fantastic way to think about pollution.
|
| But to make sure that it doesn't veer into city bashing (as HN
| is sometimes wont to do): the only difference between the
| glistening urban core and 300 square miles of suburban sprawl
| is the number of trucks needed to distribute the raw materials
| involved. All things being equal, the pollution involved in
| building the former is both lesser _and_ more sustainable.
| htek wrote:
| Jesus, this story is going to have all the bad takes. People's
| main takeaway from the article is, "it's just the way cities
| grow," "it's the zoning board's fault," "people moved near a
| cancer cluster, it's their fault," "you should be able to pollute
| an area you pay for."
|
| Seriously? The problem is the government allowing private
| corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line
| of the corporations. I don't care if someone moved next door to
| an industrial plant or a pig farm, if they are spewing toxins
| into the air we breathe, the water we drink, the ground someone
| else will eventually purchase, they are responsible for damaging
| the environment as well as harming, and in the long run, killing
| people and that should absolutely be illegal and stopped. We're
| not talking about a bad smell or loud noise, we're talking about
| people getting leukemia or Parkinson's and so on. Are you
| sociopaths?
| coffeecat wrote:
| > The problem is the government allowing private corporations
| to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the
| corporations.
|
| I disagree with the notion that regulations are inherently
| harmful to corporate profits. Foreign competitors do generally
| exist in other countries with different regulations, which
| complicates the matter in the real world; but in a healthy,
| homogeneously regulated market, a new regulation should
| increase the operating costs of all suppliers more or less
| equally. Assuming that there's a sufficient amount of
| competition to keep profit margins reasonably thin, the
| increased cost of regulatory compliance should be passed onto
| customers in the form of higher prices.
| dd36 wrote:
| Property rights. Why can you spew your toxin into my air/land?
| noahtallen wrote:
| Exactly. This isn't some sort of weird environmental topic.
| This is a human rights violation. The foundation of a huge
| swath of our law is "no one has a right to encroach on a
| person or their property." (Examples being murder and theft.)
| Pollution is a violation of that principle on a massive scale
| and it should be treated that way.
| philips wrote:
| Absolutely! I have started a project to encourage
| municipalities to use land use to protect their water and other
| sensitive spots from service stations.
|
| The EPA has all sorts of silly guidelines like saying setback a
| gas station 500 feet from school or wetlands if they pump over
| 3.6MM gallons a year. Under that? 25 feet.
|
| https://postpump.org is the project so far.
|
| A crazy thing I learned recently is the cost of cleanups for
| underground storage tanks is not really tracked or published
| publicly. I started requesting information a few weeks ago.
| https://postpump.org/oregon
| lioeters wrote:
| > The problem is the government allowing private corporations
| to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the
| corporations.
|
| Thank you, a voice of reason! This really needed to be said on
| this thread.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, internalize externalities first, starting with the most
| dangerous and egregious. most other 'solutions' are apologist
| distractions from this primary mitigation.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Before the emissions control feeding frenzy begins, let's try to
| remember that further regulation without industry input
| contributes to further inflation & moves more polluting
| production overseas where we have no control over its impact on
| the world.
|
| Yes, we should aim for zero emissions. Yes, the health impacts
| carry their own costs not to mention the human tragedy. However,
| good public policy is about rewarding good behavior (eg. tax
| credits) and punishing bad behavior (eg. tax, enforcement,
| penalties). Everyone loves to talk about the latter, while the
| former is ignored.
|
| We really need to be long-term smart about how we craft
| environmental policy in America, and particularly so given other
| countries unwillingness to manage pollution in an effective or
| transparent manner.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| You mean they'll be like oil fields out in the middle of a
| desert where nobody lives? If it's gonna off-gas, might as well
| be in the middle of nowhere.
| [deleted]
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > further regulation ... moves more polluting production
| overseas where we have no control over its impact on the world.
|
| Large corporations and not governments offshore production.
| Arguably this hasn't much to do with regulations but wholly
| different economies such that the comparative cost advantage is
| 10x or more. And of course it's possible to check under what
| conditions suppliers produce things.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > let's try to remember that further regulation without
| industry input
|
| Industry contributes all the time. Their contribution is to
| make sure nothing at all gets done by funding politicians,
| lawyers and fake science. This pattern has been repeated ad
| naseum with lead, asbestos, PCBs, climate, etc.
|
| In a just world this kind of bad faith action would mean at a
| minimum industry is ignored in the policy process while a
| solution is imposed on them. Better would be to wipe out the
| shareholders in order to compensate for the externalities
| they've inflicted on others.
| pfortuny wrote:
| The map itself:
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| The Gulf Coast seems rife with these spots, and of course with
| all population-linked metrics the Mississippi is apparent as a
| dividing line.
| leereeves wrote:
| There are quite a lot in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and around
| Chicago too.
|
| What I'm wondering is why the shaded areas around the hot
| spots on the Gulf Coast are so much bigger than the shaded
| areas around hotspots elsewhere.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Most of it is plant scale, which the model presumably uses
| to generate affected area size.
|
| So you may have one plant in Kansas and another one in
| Texas, but the Texas one processes and discharges 100x the
| volume the Kansas one does.
|
| Which makes sense re: Gulf, because there's always more
| demand for oil, so most of the refineries probably operate
| more continuously.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Looks like they're oil refineries and related industry,
| which makes sense given how much oil is pulled from the
| Gulf.
|
| Pennsylvania has a bunch of metal processing industries.
| Given Pittsburgh's reputation for steel production, that
| makes sense too.
|
| Looks like a big blend of different industries in Chicago.
| That one I can't explain.
| kingsloi wrote:
| I just launched a non-profit, part of is it high quality
| air quality monitoring for Gary, IN. I'm looking to
| install it at/near the nearest residential area near USS
| Gary Works.
|
| I've only been able to afford a 3 month rental of
| AQMesh's sensor, hopefully it'll trigger enough interest
| to get a few of these bad boys around Gary/Chicagoland.
|
| If you drive past 80/94 or 90, there's a real rotten egg
| smell, or Hydrogen Sulfide. It's been known for a long,
| and is a common complaint in NWI https://web.archive.org/
| web/20210204024942/https://www.wbez....
|
| When the sensor is up and running, I'll be adding the
| data to the air quality site I run
| https://millerbeach.community
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Chicago used to be (and somewhat still is) an industrial
| and transportation hub. A substantial amount of metals
| and chemical industry still operates there.
|
| https://chicagodetours.com/history-of-chicago-
| transportation...
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| "Before there was climate denial, there was cancer denial."
|
| Cancer is just a risk. Having a job an earning money will always
| outweigh that risk. People will put up with a lot of crummy
| environment to put food on the table.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| This pollution impacts people who don't work at these
| facilities, and if you start looking at them many employ less
| than the nearby Walmart.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The people employed by the facilities can afford to raise
| families, whereas the people employed by Walmart cannot.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Not everyone that works at these places is a chemical or
| manufacturing engineer; many are on similar wages to
| Walmart.
| [deleted]
| anonAndOn wrote:
| What many corporations try to do is downplay the risk or flat
| out deny, and pay a fool's wages because the locals don't know
| they're slowly getting poisoned. Ignorance is great for
| business because it increases profit margins.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| You're entitled to informed consent.
|
| You can argue about the merits of having that informed consent
| and still _choosing_ to put up with it, and whether that's
| truly free will or necessity, or something in between.
|
| But time and time again, there are companies that will lie to
| everyone, employees included, about the risks.
|
| That is _not_ informed consent, and is not defensible for any
| reason.
| missinfo wrote:
| This is really well presented, but wouldn't it be more accurate
| and useful with actual cancer case data instead of estimated
| cancer risk?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| too many confounding factors.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Too hard to figure out.
|
| I'm thinking of where I grew up. A local anti-establishment rag
| noted a cancer cluster in one part of town and wouldn't let go
| even when shown the truth. The end result of the mess was it
| went from a cheap but decent area to somewhere I wouldn't want
| to venture even by day.
|
| The only toxic stuff in the neighborhood was benzene from all
| the old cars about--the "cluster" was because it was the
| cheapest decent area in town, people who got sick and had
| medical bills and couldn't work ended up moving there. The rate
| of *diagnosis* of cancer there was below average, the cluster
| was purely due to immigration.
| readams wrote:
| "Cancer clusters" by themselves are not really surprising,
| since statistically if you look at enough small subsets it's
| certain you'll see such seemingly-anomalous "clusters." It's
| interesting only as the first step in an investigation, and
| not at all interesting as evidence.
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