[HN Gopher] FDA Denies Petition to Ban All Phthalates in Food Pa...
___________________________________________________________________
FDA Denies Petition to Ban All Phthalates in Food Packaging
Author : ParksNet
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-06-17 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.consumerreports.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.consumerreports.org)
| captainredbeard wrote:
| Who is the FDA protecting (with our money)? Not us.
| [deleted]
| coin wrote:
| CR has lost credibility with their anti-GMO stance and echoing
| EWG's organic-is-better nonsense.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Or we can be a little more nuanced and view CR as an
| organization that tries to do the right thing but also has some
| bad calls.
|
| I support CR for their work on testing products, I also support
| GMO as I feel it is one of the best ways we can feed people in
| the future. I also hate the over use of pesticides and hate
| Monsanto for many reasons.
| turndown wrote:
| Is this not a 'tu quoque' logical fallacy?
| rndmind wrote:
| Anti-GMO is tantamount to being against the extreme overuse of
| pestisides and herbicides, being anti-GMO is actually rooted in
| evidence as well as common sense... I don't want my
| strawberries or my corn bathed in round-up ready. Even if the
| corn does grow larger... glyphosate is bad.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There are other applications for genetically modified foods
| than just pesticide resistance.
| notyourday wrote:
| And there are other applications of shitcoins than fleecing
| public.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| I have a feeling that payed bots/shills operate on this forum
| because each time a comment like this is made it gets
| downvoted asap.
|
| As the poster above said: modern GMO doesn't mean "no need
| for pesticides": modern GMO is instead "we made plants
| resistant to PESTICIDES so they can withstand MORE toxins
| before they die so that we can kill more pests by increasing
| the pesticide dosage without killing the plants first".
|
| The result is a huge increase in the amount of this toxic
| chemicals in the plants.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| So if you're anti-roundup why not just be anti-roundup? A
| genetically modified organism is just that, it doesn't make
| any commentary on whether or not pesticide is used. We've
| been 'genetically modifying' organisms via selective breeding
| as long as we've had agriculture...
| blix wrote:
| Herbicide-resistant GMO crops account for over 80% of total
| GMO crop area worldwide. There's a reason why people
| usually talk about both at the same time :)
| rendang wrote:
| Yes, but glyphosate and other herbicides have been used
| since before GMOs and would continue to be used if GMOs
| ceased to be planted
| samatman wrote:
| It should be obvious that no one plants a glyphosate-
| resistant crop without the express intention of spraying
| more glyphosate than the equivalent non-GMO crop can
| tolerate.
| recursive wrote:
| Are all GMOs made to increase this resistance?
| samatman wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31781600
| guelo wrote:
| We're not allowed to know if food has Roundup in it. The
| only clue is that if it is not GMO it probably doesn't have
| Roundup. If you're pro-GMO you should be pro-labeling of
| agricultural chemicals in foods.
| Bjartr wrote:
| It really bothers me that anti pesticide & herbicide people
| choose to place their crosshairs on GMOs. The GMO isn't the
| problem! It's totally throwing the baby out with the
| bathwater and serves to muddle and confuse the conversation
| rather than advance their cause of reduced *icide use. There
| are real benefits to be had from GMO crops. If GMOs weren't
| demonized as a whole as a proxy for *icide usage maybe
| there'd have been more research or investment in more, and
| more useful GMO crops.
|
| [1] Wikipedia has a reasonable listing to start with for what
| traits existing GMO crops have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| List_of_genetically_modified_c...
| [deleted]
| blix wrote:
| Your own link makes a compelling case that herbicide
| resistance is ~by far~ the largest application of GMOs. The
| most commonly cited and largest impacts of GMOs derive
| primarily from hebicide application. They are demonized by
| proxy because they are inextricably linked.
| Bjartr wrote:
| > Your own link makes a compelling case that herbicide
| resistance is ~by far~ the largest application of GMOs.
|
| I make absolutely no claim to the contrary.
|
| > They are demonized by proxy because they are
| inextricably linked.
|
| That's like demonizing computer manufacturers because
| computers are inextricably linked to cybercrime. (cue
| someone bringing up a real-world example of exactly that,
| I'm sure)
|
| Is it really so hard to fight the herbicide and pesticide
| usage itself that's doing the harm that attacking the
| entire concept of GMOs is necessary in some way? If the
| use of such chemicals was disallowed in the first place,
| there'd be no incentive to use roundup-ready crops.
|
| The only things that I can think of that fighting against
| the GMOs in general instead of against herbicides and
| pesticide usage directly gets you is a target that's
| easier to scaremonger against from what I've seen.
|
| It bothers me because it's dishonest. The problem _isn
| 't_ the GMO crops. The _problem_ is companies dismissing
| customer harm in the face of increased profit. Fight the
| usage of the chemicals. Fight the companies harming their
| customers for a buck. Heck, fight the specific usage of
| roundup-ready crops. Leave GMOs as a concept and a field
| out of it.
| troyvit wrote:
| And the FDA has credibility why?
| pessimizer wrote:
| For approving awesome Alzheimer's drugs.
| turndown wrote:
| Pretty damning that the FDA only issued a report on this after a
| court ordered them to. I can't really help but believe that this
| is willful negligence - if some of these have already been banned
| for use in children's toys, why would it be fine in a plastic bag
| the child holds food in? I ate a sandwich every day from a
| plastic bag for ~12 years...
| kn0where wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, ziploc bags don't contain
| phthalates. They're used in different types of plastic.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| That's how they roll. They were forced to release the Pfizer
| covid data early. Initially they wanted to release it over the
| course of 75 years.
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importanc...
| youessayyyaway wrote:
| Over the past decade or two, the FDA has completely and
| comprehensively abrogated their regulatory duties.
|
| They had an active role in marketing opiates as safe. They cannot
| keep factories safe enough to feed our nation's infants. They
| steadfastly refuse to remove harmful chemicals from our food and
| water supply.
|
| It is utterly sickening, literally and metaphorically.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Yeah, but, there's a certain class of injectable drugs we
| should always trust them on, no matter what. Always and
| forever, and never doubt them, because doubt alone is a
| conspiracy.
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| Since its beginnings the FDA has always genuflected to
| business. Many people in the department worked hard to document
| toxins that the American public were being exposed to (e.g.
| arsenic and coal tar used as food coloring, formaldehyde and
| borax used to preserve milk and meat). However the department's
| leadership, and in a few cases the U.S. President, intervened
| to protect business interests. If you're interested check out
| The Poison Squad[1].
|
| [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-
| poison-s...
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Over the past decade or two, the FDA has completely and
| comprehensively abrogated their regulatory duties."
|
| The FDA, FTC, FCC, EPA, and a whole bunch of other "TLA"
| alphabet soup agencies ...
| bad_alloc wrote:
| What caused this change? Regulatory capture? Political reasons?
| Good old corruption?
| calibas wrote:
| Regulatory capture is a big part of it, the current head of
| the FDA has very close ties to the pharmaceutical industry: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Califf#Relationships_wi..
| .
| akira2501 wrote:
| Driven by monopolization. It's one of the side effects
| that's rarely explored in the FTC and DOJ "analysis" of
| these mergers over the past few decades. That there are
| only three domestic suppliers controlling 90% of the market
| seems like it could be the root of these particular issues
| and is what allows such seamless regulatory capture in the
| first place.
| cinntaile wrote:
| They don't refuse, they need sufficient evidence. They have
| banned different phtalates before.
| [deleted]
| yes_man wrote:
| Banning substances one after another has proven to be quite
| useless or even damaging approach. Another, less studied and
| potentially worse chemical compound will always substitute the
| banned ones. It's an endless game of whack a mole to keep banning
| a substance for next random one to spawn.
|
| More correct approach might be that if you want to use a chemical
| in food packaging or children's equipment, you must first do
| long-term studies that prove its relative safety to other studied
| compounds. In time the world would start accumulating safer
| products. I won't hold my breath though.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| There was a time--not too long ago actually--when the standards
| were waxed paper, parchment paper, and glass. Paper being
| biodegradable, glass being highly inert, and neither causing as
| much ecological devastation or endocrine disruption as plastic.
|
| So technically speaking, it's a solved problem. But from a
| market perspective, for the people who eat the glyphosate-
| dusted insulin resistance that's wrapped inside the plastic,
| i'm willing to bet the pseudoestrogens are the least of their
| worries.
| kongolongo wrote:
| When those materials were the standard we also didn't have a
| lot of the medical and technological equipment today that
| arguably reduced both mortality and morbidity across large
| swaths of a much, much larger population. Plastics are used
| widely in electronics and all of the accompanying tech
| improvements too it isn't just simple as packaging, so it
| isn't a "solved problem" if you want to go back to those
| materials and replace everything plastic has become standard
| for in today's technologies.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| The plastics, which might as well be considered solidified
| gasoline, are also a tremendous hazard in home
| furnishings[0]. The flame-retardants slow the burn _a
| little_ , but still highly combustible compared to
| traditional materials. The science is pointing the finger
| at the same flame retardants for raising cancer rates among
| firefighters around 10% higher than the general
| population[1,2].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87hAnxuh1g8
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8403436/
|
| [2] https://www.sffcpf.org/news-post-2/
| georgia_peach wrote:
| What does " _pthalates in food packaging_ " have to do with
| medicine or technology? For _food_ it is a solved problem.
|
| Also, #1 contribution to life expectancy has been public
| hygiene. Aside from antibiotics, all of the other medical
| interventions have been noise.
|
| https://sjbpublichealth.org/200-years-public-health-
| doubled-...
|
| > _the largest gain in life expectancy occurred between
| 1880 and 1920 due to public health improvements such as
| control of infectious diseases, more abundant and safer
| foods, cleaner water, and other nonmedical social
| improvements_
| suture wrote:
| The future will look unkindly at our present day pursuit of
| profits whilst ignoring negative externalities.
| Vladimof wrote:
| They could ban all additives except approved ones...
| ravenstine wrote:
| I guess we should never have outlawed the addition of lead to
| gasoline?
| corrral wrote:
| That's an element. These are compounds. There are a lot more
| compounds than elements, and it's a lot easier to find one
| you can sub in to do the same thing.
|
| (yes, the lead in gasoline was part of a particular molecule,
| too--which just proves my point, if we'd outlawed the
| specific molecule/compound that would have opened the door to
| finding other technically-different ones that still included
| lead--but you can't exactly outlaw _carbon_ , so that
| approach won't work this time)
| ravenstine wrote:
| That's really moving the goal posts. Who's to say the fuel
| industry couldn't have chosen a different substance that's
| poisonous in some other way? It's fundamentally the same
| argument. Lead being a universally poisonous element just
| made the decision easy. I agree that bans can and probably
| often do backfire, but it's not as simple as either never
| banning things or instead whitelisting things to be
| allowed.
| corrral wrote:
| It's not moving the goalposts, the two actions are
| meaningfully different. Lead is basically always
| dangerous, so "no lead" is an easy call and has the
| desired effect. The lead, specifically, was causing the
| entire problem, and it'll keep doing so pretty much no
| matter how you arrange other elements around it. Some
| other compounds to replace it might be dangerous, but
| essentially _every_ lead compound is going to be
| dangerous.
|
| Carbon compounds, meanwhile, are practically endless and
| there's no one quality you can point to and say "that,
| that right there is the problem, ban that part".
| Piecemeal bans won't work.
| samatman wrote:
| They did actually, it's called MTBE:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-
| butyl_ether#Regula....
| jrockway wrote:
| Tetraethyllead is an element?
| corrral wrote:
| > (yes, the lead in gasoline was part of a particular
| molecule, too--which just proves my point, if we'd
| outlawed the specific molecule/compound that would have
| opened the door to finding other technically-different
| ones that still included lead--but you can't exactly
| outlaw carbon, so that approach won't work this time)
|
| And that wasn't an edit, it was there from the beginning.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| They didn't ban lead, they banned Tetraethyllead, an anti-
| knock compound used in gasoline.
|
| >... if we'd outlawed the specific molecule/compound that
| would have opened the door to finding other technically-
| different ones that still included lead
|
| I'm not sure what to make of that. The point of the ban was
| to keep lead out of the environment and people's blood
| levels which we did successfully. Lead isn't some sentient
| being looking to find it's way into our systems regardless
| of the actions of man.
| corrral wrote:
| > I'm not sure what to make of that. The point of the ban
| was to keep lead out of the environment and people's
| blood levels which we did successfully. Lead isn't some
| sentient being looking to find it's way into our systems
| regardless of the actions of man.
|
| Yes--the "actions of man" might have been to create a
| different, also-useful-for-that-purpose lead compound, if
| they thought they could get away with it without someone
| putting a stop to it more or less immediately, just for
| the fact that it had lead in it. The trouble with many of
| these compounds is we can't point to a single easy-to-
| prove thing they have in common, like the presence of
| lead, as the cause of the harm--so you're left either
| testing for harm before the novel compound is included in
| products, or _endless_ piecemeal bans with harm occurring
| at every step until, if we 're fortunate, industries luck
| into compounds that are both the most economical _and_
| least-harmful of the remaining non-banned options.
| yes_man wrote:
| No, rather long term and large scale peer reviewed studies
| would have to show that lead in gasoline does not cause harm
| in humans.
|
| Real world is not black and white and we definitely should
| ban clearly poisonous or otherwise harmful (e.g. hormone
| mimicking) chemicals from food products and children's
| utilities.
|
| Point is if we keep going like this we might not ever arrive
| in a situation where everyday life is mostly free from
| dangerous compounds
| jpgvm wrote:
| Exactly, they need to switch to a whitelisted approach.
| euroderf wrote:
| I've read that this is the EU's approach, altho I don't know
| how it works out in practice.
| gruez wrote:
| The downside is that novel technologies (eg. GMOs) take
| forever to get approved.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| How is that a bad thing?
| pragmatic wrote:
| People starving to death in the mean time, perhaps?
| suture wrote:
| As a result of GMOs the carrying capacity of the world
| increased. Isn't it the case that the population tends
| toward the carrying capacity? If so then the delay of
| GMOs would only mean that the world's population today
| would be lower and not that the amount of overall
| starvation would be higher. We still have episodes of
| starvation in the world even with GMOs.
| gruez wrote:
| >As a result of GMOs the carrying capacity of the world
| increased. Isn't it the case that the population tends
| toward the carrying capacity?
|
| This model assumes that human population will grow
| forever. Carrying capacity is one constraint on total
| population, but it's not the only constraint. Nowadays
| population growth is slowing down because demographic
| factors (ie. falling fertility), not because we've
| reached the earth's carrying capacity and famines are
| killing people off.
| suture wrote:
| Sure, those factors come into play and are dominant. It
| seems to me that one can't assume there would have been
| more starvation had GMOs not been invented. And the
| factors you mentioned haven't yet had an effect in India
| and Africa. The population of there has greatly increased
| alongside the rise of GMO. I'm not saying GMOs are the
| cause of sad increase but I am suggesting that the
| population in India and Africa might have been lower
| today without GMOs without being the result of
| starvation.
| jpgvm wrote:
| People in the EU aren't starving to death though.
|
| Appropriate laws for appropriate circumstances. Given
| high standard of living in EU they can afford to take the
| long road with many improvements to food security
| favoring safety over reduced cost or expediency.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Which makes sense. New technologies should be approached
| using a precautionary principle.
| gruez wrote:
| >New technologies should be approached using a
| precautionary principle.
|
| But what happens in reality is:
|
| When _we_ apply the precautionary principle, it 's
| because technology is dangerous and The Responsible Thing
| to Do is to be careful. When our opponents apply the
| precautionary principle, they're luddites who hate change
| and just want an excuse to drag their feet. Here are some
| examples to illustrate that effect
|
| * nuclear power
|
| * vaccines
|
| * self-driving cars/AI
|
| * gmo
| jjoonathan wrote:
| What's your plan to ensure the whitelist is responsibly
| curated?
|
| My guess: it'll either have everything on it, or every N
| years we'll get a new brand of government mandated Asbestos
| Free Cereal. No thanks.
| im3w1l wrote:
| First, do the mother of all grandfathers. Start with a very
| big list of allowed things, so that every product currently
| on the shelves can be sold without any issue. And then plan
| to both add and remove things as time goes on.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Same plan we use for drugs. Test if it's safe, if it's safe
| we allow it's use, if not we don't.
|
| Initially it will probably need to grandfather stuff in but
| having a whitelist will make it easier to ensure unsafe
| things aren't replaced by even worse things.
| kongolongo wrote:
| The problem is you can't practically do that for many
| compounds either because of ethical reasons or because it
| would take far too long and would in the mean time impede
| progress significantly.
|
| Take plastics for example, they're as acutely non-toxic
| as you can get you're not having any readily measurable
| adverse health outcomes from handling it, touching it,
| and even consuming foods directly in contact with it. And
| yet there are still things we would have missed even if
| we adopted this whitelisting approach. We would have
| never captured the problem of microplastics that we see
| today, the mechanical and chemical breakdown of plastics
| in the environment leading to far higher consumption and
| presence of it in our bodies could not have realistically
| been studied or predicted even if we took a whitelisting
| approach.
|
| Now you have to consider what the effects of whitelisting
| everything would mean for productivity and progress.
| Imagine how much more everyday things would cost if
| plastics had to be whitelisted before being allowed in
| any products. Even now knowing about the existence of
| microplastics, it isn't clear that the effects they have
| decisively outweigh the benefits of plastics.
| jpgvm wrote:
| First of all I am mostly talking about plastics in the
| context of food packaging.
|
| I would be more inclined to agree with your argument
| regarding progress/innovation if there were more novel
| plastics coming to the market for food packaging but that
| isn't really the case and there hasn't been anything
| ground-breaking since PET.
|
| Whitelisting at this stage of maturity isn't just the
| right thing to do, it's also easy and beats playing
| whackamole if you decide something needs to get phased
| out.
| serf wrote:
| >I would be more inclined to agree with your argument
| regarding progress/innovation if there were more novel
| plastics coming to the market for food packaging but that
| isn't really the case and there hasn't been anything
| ground-breaking since PET.
|
| disagree. there are new plastics _constantly_ , and using
| bio-degradable plastics in packaging is getting a huge
| push within the industry for the past few years.
|
| One example would be bovine-gelatin-films which are a new
| replacement for 'saran-wrap' style wrapping plastics.
|
| a push for biodegradable plastics has been active since
| the U.N. listed it as a goal.
|
| one imagines it would be hard to fully vet every proposed
| idea, there are thousands. Time will tell which will be
| human-kind.
|
| https://sdgs.un.org/goals
| tonymet wrote:
| Given the downward quality of life trajectory: including obesity,
| allergies, mental health issues like autism & depression - I'm
| highly concerned about the food, air and water supply. We should
| be more sensitive to possible chemical risks with the horrible
| health trajectory.
|
| I would expect a specific task force to address chronic health
| issues , by the FDA & EPA
| westmeal wrote:
| Wish I worked in the FDA so I'd get all sorts of fun kickbacks
| from corporations
| derelicto wrote:
| Daily reminder that the FDA also approved Therano's herpes test
| https://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-gets-fda-approval-2...
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but it seems like the test only received
| "clearance", not "approval". Many people conflate these terms
| even though they represent very different regulatory standards.
| I'm not sure it even makes sense for a purely diagnostic thing
| like a blood test to get "approval".
| bergenty wrote:
| It was a clearance
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-17 23:01 UTC)