[HN Gopher] Trichloroethylene: An invisible cause of Parkinson's...
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Trichloroethylene: An invisible cause of Parkinson's disease?
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 248 points
Date : 2023-03-15 03:24 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (content.iospress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (content.iospress.com)
| eternityforest wrote:
| I think this is what someone I knew used. He had all kinds of
| health problems, diabetes, vision issues, heart problems, and he
| suspected it was from some electronics related chlorinated
| solvent.
|
| It's also in brake cleaner, which I have no idea how anyone
| tolerates that stuff.
|
| I've never in my life been in a situation where I wanted a
| stronger solvent than acetone, I'm very skeptical most of these
| harsh cleaning chemicals are actually needed outside specialist
| industrial uses.
|
| There's a lot of chemicals that do basically the same thing with
| widely varying desire to kill you. I don't understand why people
| like the dangerous ones.
|
| They say it works better but what does that mean? Saves a few
| minutes? Gets it cleaner? Are people seeing failures in the field
| because of the less toxic alternatives leaving residue? Does it
| even matter at all how clean or not some of this stuff is? Is it
| just gonna get covered in more grease in 5 minutes?
| Vrondi wrote:
| Gosh, I've watched an old school mechanics clean misc items and
| even their hands with brake cleaner many times...
| h2odragon wrote:
| Its great for cleaning guns without having to disassemble
| them. Half assed but better than nothing, aka "field
| expedient"
| [deleted]
| code_duck wrote:
| Having worked in art-related fields which involve various
| dangerous processes, many people are cavalier about the dangers
| of toxins. They do not accept that safety equipment or
| precautions are worth the effort, and often gauge danger by
| whether they feel ill immediately so long/medium term hazards
| are ignored. It's a combination of machismo, laziness and
| ignorance.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| The stuff I have here says "C6-C7, n-alkanes, isoalkanes,
| cyclics, <5% n-hexane.
|
| So basically, "tin of shit that's too thin to call petrol",
| here in the UK.
|
| I haven't seen the chlorinated stuff for years, either.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I use isopropyl alcohol for cleaning bicycle brake discs -
| that evaporates away without leaving residue, but you don't
| want to be inhaling too many fumes from it.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Pretty much any of this stuff - including the chlorinated
| stuff - is okay as long as you're using it somewhere well-
| ventilated and not making a habit of getting it on you.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember that if you use brake cleaner on hot parts, you
| would get a really really toxic chemical.
|
| EDIT: phosgene gas.
|
| _Chlorinated brake cleaner containing tetrachloroethylene
| will, on exposure to high temperatures (above 500 degF (260
| degC)) or strong UV light, decompose into phosgene and hydrogen
| chloride, both of which are extremely dangerous if inhaled._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_cleaner
| boilerupnc wrote:
| I used to work in an automotive wire manufacturing plant. One
| of the plastic coatings we used was PVC. When the operators
| would have quality problems (centering the copper within a
| few mm of the plastic sheath or uneven sheath surface
| defects), they would suspect their tooling (tip + die) was in
| some way dirty or compromised. The proper way to remediate
| was to shut down the line (plastics extruder, pulleys, etc)
| and replace the tooling with a fresh clean set. Then restart.
| Total cycle time might be 30 mins. Unfortunately, this came
| at great expense to the operator in lost efficiency since
| they were paid by productivity (how much good quality wire
| was produced during their shift) which obviously took a
| serious hit. So, in spite of warnings about the dangers of
| toxic fumes (phosgene), they would take the personally
| efficient and lucrative shortcut of running a blow torch
| against the suspect tooling while the line was in motion
| until the quality "wrinkle" was ironed out (e.g some rogue
| piece of hardened plastic on the tooling has been
| melted/burnt away). Problem solved and paycheck protected. It
| was a daily occurrence to see little plumes of smoke
| regularly wafting upward periodically across 7-8 separate
| production lines and settling in the top 1/3 of the factory
| airspace. Phosgene was undoubtedly a large component. No
| amount of admonishment and warning can be effective when it
| hits the operators wallet. For those unaware of phosgene, "
| When vinyl chloride burns, it releases hazardous chemicals
| such as phosgene and hydrogen chloride into the air. Phosgene
| is a colorless gas with a pungent odor that can cause
| vomiting and breathing difficulties" [0]
|
| [0] https://trulaw.com/the-dangers-of-vinyl-chloride-
| phosgene-an...
| Vrondi wrote:
| Phosgene is heavier than air (and so it sinks to ground
| level). That's why it was used in trench warfare in WWI. It
| would have stayed down where the workers were, not floated
| up by the ceiling. Those would have been other toxins up
| there.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Interesting. And Yikes! That's even worse than I thought
| for all of us on the shop floor. There was so much
| particulate in the air on a regular basis that a white
| paper taped on the wall at the start of the day was gray
| by lunch time. No masks. Appreciate the additional
| insight.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| It's also in brake cleaner
|
| It pays to check the (M)SDS. Chlorinated brake cleaner is nasty
| stuff, real dangerous if you're using it on something you want
| to weld. However, I haven't seen chlorinated brake cleaner in
| California since I was a kid. Lately they've been cracking down
| on the non-chlorinated stuff due to VOCs. The non-chlorinated
| stuff I use is acetone, naptha, heptane+n-heptane, and CO2.
|
| Acetone is blissfully not so toxic but it is extremely
| volatile, which is both a safety and a practical concern. I
| bought a small flask of the stuff recently from the big box
| store and you could not buy it at the self-checkout.
|
| The chlorinated stuff is just a better solvent. Dries faster,
| leaves less residue (than some non-chlorinated versions), and
| is better at dissolving the greasy funk. Generally it's not
| enough of an improvement, even if you have the chlorinated
| stuff at your disposal.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| This is a popular brake cleaner sold on Amazon [0] that I
| bought some time ago, I'm not sure but reading through the
| SDS it seems it does not contain TCE? It says it contains
| "Hydrocarbons, C6-C7, n-alkanes, isoalkanes, cyclics, <5%
| n-hexane"[1]
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005510S9M/
|
| [1] https://www.service.european-
| aerosols.com/en/products/presto...
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| There are two common types of brake cleaner available in
| most of the United States: chlorinated and non-chlorinated.
| The big advantage of retail packaging is that it's
| typically in an aerosol can so you have the added perk of
| mechanical cleaning action. I typically use CRC brand stuff
| since it's easy to find, doesn't seem to harm most of the
| PA6/66 plastic under the hood, and works well. In not-
| California CRC markets the chlorinated brake cleaner with a
| red label and the non-chlorinated stuff with a green label.
| In California it's _all_ non-chlorinated (potentially all
| low-VOC now too) despite the red /green cans having
| different SKUs. I suspect that the EU outlawed the
| chlorinated stuff a while back as they're typically more
| proactive than not-California.
| jabl wrote:
| I didn't look at the links, but from the ingredients list
| you posted, yes those are pure hydrocarbons, nothing
| chlorinated.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > Acetone is blissfully not so toxic...
|
| I'll say. Oak Ridge National Lab has this to say about the
| toxicity of acetone:
|
| > Acetone (CAS No. 67-64-1) is a clear, colorless, highly
| flammable liquid with a vapor pressure of 182 mm Hg at 20C
| (Morgott, 1993). It is completely miscible in water and
| soluble in organics such as benzene and ethanol (ATSDR,
| 1994). Its log Kow has been estimated to be -0.24 (ATSDR,
| 1994). Acetone is used primarily as a solvent and chemical
| intermediate, and it is also found in some consumer products
| such as nail polish remover (Inoue, 1983; Kumai et al.,
| 1983).
|
| https://rais.ornl.gov/tox/profiles/acetone.html
|
| Given a choice between the chlorinated stuff, and something
| one can drink half a shot glass of and not suffer any toxic
| effects, I'll take the acetone any day.
|
| I generally buy my acetone online, BTW. It's relatively easy
| to buy small quantities of pure acetone, because it's sold as
| nail polish remover.
| beeforpork wrote:
| > Given a choice between the chlorinated stuff, and
| something one can drink half a shot glass of and not suffer
| any toxic effects, I'll take the acetone any day.
|
| Fun fact: if you drink isopropyl alcohol, your body
| metabolises it (partly) to acetone, which you can smell and
| taste. But, well, don't drink either anyway. :-)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think many nail polish removers aren't pure, so you have
| to check. Usually hardware stores have cans of acetone
| without any additives.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Well, even in California, you can buy pure acetone OTC -
| you just have to interact with a human cashier who probably
| won't even know why the self-checkout refuses to let you
| buy it. I don't care one way or another except that the big
| box stores try to push you towards the self-checkout lanes.
|
| Nail polish remover, like non-ethyl alcohol, is likely to
| be adulterated (e.g. with scents or crap to soften your
| cuticles, etc.). Depending on how clean you need something
| to be it may be an issue (and you probably _can_ find high
| test nail polish remover). I was removing these infernal
| stickers from cooking implements so I went with the big box
| store. Depending on what you 're working with you may still
| need to wipe it down with isopropyl anyhow.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > Nail polish remover, like non-ethyl alcohol, is likely
| to be adulterated
|
| Not if you buy the stuff that literally says "pure
| acetone," _e.g._ https://www.amazon.com/Onyx-
| Professional-Acetone-Remover-Fas...
|
| I was going to suggest that the only "adulterant" likely
| to be in something labeled "pure acetone" would be water
| from the air, but Stack Exchange suggests differently: ht
| tps://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/54341/acetone
| -...
| jabl wrote:
| Acetone bought from your local shop that sells car spare
| parts, tools, and whatnot is likely several orders of
| magnitude cheaper than the same acetone bought from the
| cosmetics department. I keep offering my bottle of
| acetone to my SO but she insist on using the cosmetics
| department version. ;)
| rspeele wrote:
| Having used TCE to clean heavily fouled parts I can't emphasize
| enough how much better it is than acetone. It's really not
| close. Acetone might as well be water compared to TCE. TCE
| makes years of caked-on, baked-on crud wipe off like it was
| never there. And 30 seconds later not a trace of residue will
| remain. In the extremely rare case that something is _hard_ to
| clean with TCE, that same thing will be nearly _impossible_ to
| clean with a less evil substance.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I have zero doubt it causes cancer and God-
| only-knows what else. The stuff is like an eraser for physical
| reality. Whatever tiny droplets of it you breathe in, are
| desperately trying to clean your nasty organs away and leave a
| gleaming, residue-free skeleton behind. I suspect it could
| clean the face right off your head like in the end scene of
| Raiders of the Lost Ark.
|
| I no longer use it. For my purposes anything that can't be
| cleaned without TCE, doesn't need to be cleaned that badly. But
| I _do_ get why it was used so much.
| frankus wrote:
| An interesting quirk of TCE is that it's a "dense non-aqueous
| phase liquid" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_non-
| aqueous_phase_liquid), which means that it sinks in water
| generally and groundwater specifically, making it hard to
| remediate.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, neurodegenrative diseases are horrible
| but at the same time this is a review of the literature.
|
| They are reporting about feeding mice with 400 mg/kg/day during 6
| to 8 weeks. For humans, this is equivalent to 33mg/kg/day. So for
| a 80kg body: 2.6g, half a sugar cube every day.
|
| If you feed an animal (including us) with unreasonable levels of
| most anything you will observe weird stuff.
|
| For example feeding mice with high fat diets gives them a kind of
| Alzheimer disease.
| adrianN wrote:
| If you're unsure whether there is an effect you probably want
| to start with a very high dose to justify funding for follow-up
| studies that determine which dose is safe.
| throwaway12245 wrote:
| > feeding mice with high fat diets gives them a kind of
| Alzheimer disease. Do you have a link for this.
|
| I found this: "However, some of these diets contain levels of
| dietary fat that are much higher than the levels that humans
| routinely consume. The question has been raised as to whether
| experimental use of these diets with very high levels of fat
| adequately models the situation of human obesity."
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-019-0363-7
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| That's a lot of anything to dose with.
|
| It reminds me a bit of the datasheet for sodium chloride -
| common table salt - that describes the skin contact LD50 (the
| amount that is a lethal dose for 50% of a population of test
| rabbits) as ">25kg".
|
| So what do we read from that? If you drop a sack of salt
| weighing as much as an eight-year-old child on a series of
| rabbits, roughly half of them will die? I can't say I'm *very*
| surprised...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > So what do we read from that? If you drop a sack of salt
| weighing as much as an eight-year-old child on a series of
| rabbits, roughly half of them will die?
|
| No, you should read exactly what it says. If you put a series
| of rabbits in skin contact with 25kg of salt each, _less_
| than half of them will die. That 's how we know the LD50 is
| greater than 25 kilograms.
|
| I assume 25 kilograms was the limit of testing, and that's
| why the result is reported the way it is.
|
| I'm also willing to go out on a limb and assume the number of
| test rabbits that died from being put in skin contact with
| 25kg of salt was zero, which is less than half of the test
| pool as long as it contained a positive number of rabbits.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I'd be surprised if a rabbit has enough skin surface area
| to be in contact with more than about 1Kg of salt. How
| could the skin contact test continue past the point where
| extra salt wasn't in skin contact?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Put the rabbit and the salt in a sealed container and
| pump the air out to expand the rabbit?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If you assume that solid salt can't flow, then it can't.
|
| But for e.g. a contact poison absorbed through the skin,
| sticking your finger into a large pool of the stuff might
| get you a bigger dose than sticking your finger into a
| tiny puddle, even with little to no difference in surface
| area of skin making contact.
|
| Going back to salt, it is known and used for its ability
| to draw water out of other materials. If you stay in
| contact with a large quantity of salt, it will kill you
| through dehydration, because even though it can't flow,
| the water that you contain can. Your skin should have a
| good amount of resistance to this; the inside of your
| nostrils, or an open wound, not so much.
|
| I'm speculating here; if you really want a definitive
| answer, you'll need to find someone who creates data for
| MSDS sheets.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > I'm also willing to go out on a limb and assume the
| number of test rabbits that died from being put in skin
| contact with 25kg of salt was zero,
|
| Depending on what height it was applied from
|
| > less than half of the test pool as long as it contained a
| positive number of rabbits.
|
| Positive integer number of rabbits, with any luck, although
| I suspect in this instance imaginary rabbits may have been
| used. Definitely not complex ones though.
| [deleted]
| misja111 wrote:
| > ... as long as it contained a positive number of rabbits.
|
| That seems a pretty safe assumption.
| phkahler wrote:
| It's different if dropping the salt crushes the animals, gets
| eaten and causes a heart attack, burns off their fur, causes
| bleeding, or causes Parkinson disease. That last one is so
| odd you'd take note of any high dose of anything causing it.
| Like TFA suggests, this is reason for further investigation.
| eshack94 wrote:
| The last part of your comment feels like it should be the
| punchline for an xkcd comic.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Ha, ha, sorry if it looks odd, English is not my native
| tongue.
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| Not very different from study designs used by pharmaceuticals
| to show that their new patent-pending drug outperforms the
| generic one. They deliberately design it so that the
| competing drug isn't the right dose or somehow not
| administered correctly... and if someone tries to fight them,
| their license is taken away.
| devb wrote:
| So? That doesn't preclude low doses over a long period from
| causing harm. High doses are used to prove a conclusive link,
| not establish a lower limit of toxic effects.
| bschne wrote:
| > They are reporting about feeding mice with 400 mg/kg/day
| during 6 to 8 weeks. For humans, this is equivalent to
| 33mg/kg/day.
|
| How does one convert that? It makes sense that this isn't
| necessarily linear, but I have no idea how to turn one of those
| numbers into the other
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Here, "Dose Translation from Animals to Humans":
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17942826/
|
| Generally, from mice, it's ([mouse dose in mg/kg] * (3/37)) =
| human equivalent dose in mg/kg.
| misja111 wrote:
| > 400 mg/kg/day during 6 to 8 weeks. For humans, this is
| equivalent to 33mg/kg/day. So for a 80kg body: 2.6g, half a
| sugar cube every day.
|
| But humans have much more time to ingest it. Parkinson develops
| during decades, not weeks.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Damn. Checks label on CRC QD (quick dry) contact cleaner. No TCE,
| but it's the all-star team of halogenated stuff that will
| volatilize as quick as possible.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| This is scary. I've never heard of this chemical but it looks
| like something I likely come in contact with almost daily.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hopefully not so much these days.
|
| Those of us who worked in the Electronics industry in the 1980s
| did come into contact daily.
| jrmski wrote:
| Indeed, one of Google's campuses in Mountain View has (or at
| least had) TCE vapor leftover from previous industry.
| https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4018768/tce-vapors-
| found-...
| hammock wrote:
| The entire city of Mountain View is literally one giant EPA
| Superfund site (look it up) and I wouldn't go near any of
| those beautiful creeks they have running around or play in
| the soil...
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I just did look it up and I'd seems the superfund area is
| just a 17 acre zone around a trailer park?
| hammock wrote:
| There are at least eight different sites in Mountain View
| https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-
| where-y...
|
| Separately, there are many orgs which track and map the
| TCE plumes in the groundwater and you can find that info
| as well through google
| akiselev wrote:
| Note that the map only shows National Priority List
| sites. They're considered to be the most polluted but
| that doesn't mean that sites not on the NPL list aren't
| also a concern (my county only has one NPL site but over
| a dozen non-NPL contaminated areas)
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| It's not just Mountain View. All of Silicon Valley is
| dotted with superfund sites. Years ago IBM got sued by
| former employees about exposure to carcinogens at their
| San Jose factories. IBM won, but, yeah, I'd still be
| careful.
|
| And then there's the military waste...
| hammock wrote:
| Yes good point about the military waste. Hunters Point in
| SF comes to mind. A highly contaminated radioactive site
| that required extensive soil remediation.
|
| A lot of the radioactive soil was just sent to regular
| state landfills.
|
| Then after they had started building multi family homes
| on top of the site, they found out the cleanup company
| was falsifying soil samples and the site was still highly
| radioactive.
|
| I hope that situation is not typical of how Superfund
| sites are handled
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| What Lennar did in BVHP ought to be criminal. Treasure
| Island (also an ex-military Superfund site) is a mess of
| radioactive waste on its way to becoming luxury condos as
| well. Oh well, it will be a fun cancer cluster in a
| couple decades.
|
| AMD, Intel, Fairchild, IBM, HP, Nat Semi, Raytheon,
| Teledyne, Westinghouse, and LLNL all gifted the Bay Area
| with Superfund sites with most concentrated in Santa
| Clara county. Even stuff that doesn't rise to the level
| of a Superfund site can still be far too polluted to
| develop (e.g. Brisbane).
| nraynaud wrote:
| That's what used to run in parts cleaners until a few decades
| ago, so all body shops, mechanics, job shops and a ton of
| factories had those.
| myself248 wrote:
| Really? My dad's parts cleaner always had gasoline in it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I remeber it being available on the shelves in my childhood.
|
| It's also narcotic and carcinogenic. Banned in EU since 2010.
| p0nce wrote:
| My uncle's job was to clean elevators using TCE and died at about
| 25yo from this.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Trichloroethylene for decaf sounds as an idea as bad as
| tetraethyl lead for fuel, freon for refrigeration, teflon for
| non-stick pans, glyphosate for weed control and PFAS for
| microwave popcorn bags and tampons.
|
| This is fine(tm).
| lloeki wrote:
| I seem to recall teflon is completely neutral to the human
| body, it's the chemical used to glue it to the pan that is the
| issue.
| sethammons wrote:
| PSA for bird owners: that off gassing is highly lethal to
| birds. You shouldn't cook with teflon and have birds. They
| can die in minutes even when on the other side of the house.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes. It can emit toxic gasses at high temperatures though, so
| I'd recomment always trying to keep it under 200degC (390deg
| F). (My pans are a ceramic non-stick so I don't have to
| worry, but they are more expensive).
| lloeki wrote:
| > keep it under 200degC (390deg F)
|
| Conveniently it seems that the smoking point of olive oil
| is about that, while its boiling point is ~300degC
| (570degF), which give nice physical cues without having a
| thermometer.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So, if there's smoke, you are too late already.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "solvent that is clear, colorless, volatile, nonflammable, and
| environmentally persistent"
|
| Call me stupid, but can it really be volatile and persistent? I'd
| expect volatility and persistence to be negatively correlated.
| KMag wrote:
| It can evaporate, but doesn't chemically decompose very
| quickly. Its tendency to evaporate isn't very relevant if it's
| in your groundwater, for instance.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would think od volatile as reacting. If it just means
| evaporating, then I guess that makes sense.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Persistent, in this case, means it doesn't break down readily.
| As it happens once it does eventually break down the resulting
| stuff is also pretty nasty: first you get 1-2-DCE, and then
| vinyl chloride.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| For additional reading, here is the popularized article that led
| me to this research:
|
| https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-common-cleaning-che...
| szundi wrote:
| Question mark at the end of title never means anything good, pass
| once_inc wrote:
| Betteridge's Law:
|
| | "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by
| the word 'no'."
| yung234 wrote:
| More generally there is way too much crap in the environment and
| it is past time for people to start protesting this. We are
| likely paying a price for this in rising rates of obesity and
| deteriorating mental health. It's time for cleaner outdoor air,
| better indoor air quality and ventilation and a tighter rein on
| the proliferating number of chemicals that surround us. As the
| item notes, Parkinson's rates have been increasing for some time
| and are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.
| outworlder wrote:
| > More generally there is way too much crap in the environment
| and it is past time for people to start protesting this.
|
| Some of this crap is worse than others. Some we can destroy and
| maybe make our food supply and water safe. But others are
| really hardy, by design (Teflon!). There's no good way to get
| rid of them and this should have been treated as an emergency
| ages ago. In a sense they are worse than radioactive waste
| because they don't even decay.
| s0rce wrote:
| If teflon didn't decay it would be fine as it doesn't pose a
| health risk, its basically inert. Its the manufacturing
| chemicals and degradants (PFAS/PFOA) that are the problem and
| represent persistent contamination.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| People are expendable. There's a new crop every year. Corporate
| profits, on the other hand ...
| mattwest wrote:
| [Environmental contamination] is way less of an explanatory
| variable of obesity and mental health than [dietary choice and
| activity level]. Its effect resides in the error term.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The (extremely long) blog argues otherwise:
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...
|
| I don't entirely agree with what they have to say, especially
| when they search for a possible target chemical, but they
| provide a whole bunch of contradictory evidence against the
| naive laziness hypothesis. Of which the most convincing
| argument is lab animals: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/d
| oi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2010...
|
| Lab animals do not have control over their diet and activity
| level, and yet are becoming more obese.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| There are a couple of issues drawing too much from this
| study.
|
| 1. They haven't found any mechanistic evidence to support
| this.
|
| 2. All of these populations had access to manufactured
| food. (Either human or pet food)
|
| 3. This is really only one study, not really a field of
| research.
|
| IT seems like the theory manufactured food has gotten tasty
| since the 80's would also explain this data.
| outworlder wrote:
| > dietary choice
|
| Is it really a choice when 75% of all food found in the
| supermarket has been spiked with sugar and 88% of the US
| population is suffering from metabolic issues? And sugar has
| been linked to a host of degenerative neurological
| conditions.
|
| > activity level
|
| We can't outrun a bad diet.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Somehow you have to pay for the convenience of having quick
| food 24/7. To really asses if air pollutants play a role in
| weight gain subjects under test should eat the same
| calories and breathe the same (or different) air, still it
| would be difficult as not all metabolisms are the same. As
| a totally anecdotal note, i've never met an obese person
| who doesn't overeat.
| mattwest wrote:
| >Is it really a choice when 75% of all food found in the
| supermarket has been spiked with sugar and 88% of the US
| population is suffering from metabolic issues? And sugar
| has been linked to a host of degenerative neurological
| conditions.
|
| Yes, it is. If you walk into the store, pick up the item,
| pay for it, take it home, and eat it, then it was 100% your
| choice. Just because a decision is difficult doesn't
| absolve an individual of responsibility.
|
| >We can't outrun a bad diet.
|
| You can, but it's not easy. However, what tends to happen
| is when you increase you activity level your body will
| auto-regulate cravings for better food. High performance
| athletes can get by on mostly fast food if they need. Most
| don't because they know it's not optimal.
|
| Both of your notions are currently popular but that doesn't
| make them right. Emotional reasoning has taken over diet,
| fitness, and health and caused millions of people to give
| up their personal responsibility and sense of control. It's
| harmful thinking.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Good luck getting any laws on this passed if Republicans
| control any branch of congress, or not struck down if they
| continue to leverage their judiciary control for blatantly
| political ends.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| Good luck heating your house or feeding your family if the
| Democrats continue their blatant political goals of
| depopulation.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Depopulation? You mean stepping back from overpopulation?
| Do you want to live in a world where everyone lives in a
| 200sqft box and eats manufactured sludge because we don't
| have resources for people to live like actual humans unless
| they're from an oligarch family?
|
| I can feed my family with a small permaculture farm, some
| chickens and goats, without relying on anyone else. I can
| heat my house with wood and solar energy retained in water,
| again without relying on anyone else. If my farm is
| surrounded by polluters and thus the ground is so tainted
| that nothing grows without buying Monsanto's entire
| catalog, that would be the fault of Republicans who've
| blocked environmental regulation.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > heat my house with wood
|
| In what world is this remotely good for the environment,
| in any way?
|
| ---
|
| Also, if you do really live on a farm off the grid, you
| might be interested in this NYT profile:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/thomas-massie-
| rep...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| In a world where there aren't way too many billions of
| people.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I like people! I think life is inherently good, and more
| people alive to enjoy the world is something we should be
| aiming for.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I dislike being around people. More people means more
| competition for the good stuff like space, a nice view,
| quiet, delicious fish/game, etc.
|
| You might argue that more people produce more other good
| stuff, but that is a flawed argument for a few reasons.
| For starters, a lot of scarcity in our economy is fake
| and introduced to maximize profit. Second, there's only
| so much valuable work to be done, but everyone has to
| have a job, so somewhere between 50-80% of people end up
| doing meaningless work (think of all the people involved
| in making/marketing a lot of infomercial garbage and lame
| tchotchkes like dog bowls shaped like toilets that flush
| when the dog eats). Nobody would miss those things if
| they'd never existed, and I'm sure none of the people
| responsible wanted to do that sort of thing growing up.
| It's basically a big capitalist circle jerk.
| [deleted]
| tohnjitor wrote:
| Overpopulation is a myth best left behind in the 1970s.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You should try living in Hong Kong and see how you feel
| about overpopulation. As climate change makes huge
| swathes of land unlivable and population continues to
| grow that will be your future.
| handedness wrote:
| 'You should try living in the Yukon and see how you feel
| about overpopulation. As climate change...'
|
| Your experience is valid but the population density of a
| particular city (or lack thereof in a particular
| territory) is a poor indicator of whether the earth's
| population is too high for its carrying capacity.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| 1. Republicans refuse to enforce any environmental
| regulation on industries, no matter how dire the
| consequences.
|
| 2. Poisonous chemicals leech into air, soil, water. Then
| they accumulate up the food chain. Humans are at the apex.
|
| 3. Synthetic hormones, plastics, and etc. decimate
| fertility.
|
| If you're concerned about population growth, you should
| support some degree of environmental regulation. Only one
| mainstream* party in the states gets you that.
|
| * A mathematical consequence of first past the post voting
| systems is that the two largest parties are stable. Third
| parties only exist as unstable equilibria. If you desire a
| serious third party, you should also support election
| reform. . . which also means not voting Republican.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| HN showing it's bias again.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The ironic thing is that HN is actually biased towards
| libertarians and bernie bros, it only feels like it's
| heavily democrat because those groups don't like a lot of
| republican policy either.
| uoaei wrote:
| What's funny is that until now, many couldn't conceive of
| a distinction between Bernie bros and Democrats.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Bernie bros are pro social equity (income distribution
| fairness), pro education, pro drug law reform and anti-
| establishment, but also typically not into political
| correctness or D&I, and frequently either gun positive or
| gun neutral (schools excepted). They are mostly people
| who came under the democratic umbrella to support Bernie
| but often do not consider themselves democrats.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's getting close to the famous 'Reality has a well
| known liberal bias.'
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_20
| 06_...
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| I mean if your perspective on reality is dominated by
| these companies it will definitely _appear_ that way:
| https://i.imgur.com/taGzsZP.jpg
|
| But there's a whole world out there, and Trump winning in
| 2016 sure surprised a lot of people who believe that
| reality has a liberal bias.
| diag wrote:
| Trump only won thanks to the electoral college, not
| because of democracy.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Stop giving democrats a pass for doing nothing. Look at how
| ineffective Buttigieg has been on rail safety re: east
| palestine.
|
| Tribalist myopia enables this status quo.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I kind of hate the democrats too. It's
| frustrating that the choice is between "kind but mostly
| incompetent and somewhat corrupt" and "cruel and extremely
| corrupt"
| handedness wrote:
| So, tribalist myopia.
| ChancyChance wrote:
| Great. I spent all four years in highschool rebuilding car
| engines practically swimming in this stuff because my friends and
| I used it as a degreaser. We didn't swallow it, but we did get
| blisters on our hands and it turned our skin white and ashy.
|
| Once I left highschool I stopped working on cars (discovered
| computers), but I wonder how screwed we are, or are going to be
| (we're all nearing our 60's even though we still have the
| maturity of 20 somethings).
| pram wrote:
| My dad was an aircraft mechanic and he got a ton of tumors in
| his arm from whatever cleaning liquids they used at the time.
| It has given me a lifetime of paranoia, always wearing gloves
| when I'm working on some mechanical thing.
|
| All that shit is probably in the ground water though.
| uoaei wrote:
| Two football star athletes at a local high school (poor,
| majority-Black neighborhood) died of mysterious brain tumors
| about 5 years ago. Their high school is a few hundred feet
| down a gentle grade from a row of auto shops. The parents of
| the deceased were certain for years that the auto shops were
| the problem, and brought it up repeatedly to city council and
| the mayor, but no one acted on it. No one even tested the
| groundwater until a routine inspection of the high school's
| _heating_ system in the basement a couple years later, where
| they found extremely unhealthy levels of TCE. I 'm not sure
| if they ever started enforcing things better, but knowing the
| local government I doubt it.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| What's sad about this is that in 2023 there's still a
| subculture of mechanics who think it's "weak" or "unmanly" to
| use things like gloves when working on cars (and I'm pretty
| sure that extends to other forms of hands on work)
|
| We don't have the excuse earlier generations had, we know
| this stuff causes cancer, we know it seeps into your skin and
| doesn't come out just because you washed your hands well, but
| people still don't see a problem with going fist deep in used
| engine oil or dumping half a can of brake cleaner on
| something in an enclosed garage
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| When? Trich has been recognized as a hazardous chemical in
| Europe for many decades.
| throwaway09432 wrote:
| Does carbon filter this stuff?
| lutera wrote:
| Anyone with Chemistry knowledge - Is this stuff related to DDT
| insecticide in any way?
| scythe wrote:
| Basically no. They're both chlorocarbons, but the resemblance
| ends there. DDT doesn't even contain any nonaromatic sp2
| carbons.
| [deleted]
| once_inc wrote:
| There's also a very high correlation between PD and insecticide
| use. Cows eating grass treated with insecticide (sometimes
| because a farmer on the plot upwind of their meadow uses it)
| produce milk that contains high concentrations of insecticides.
| People drinking lots of dairy ingest those insecticides and
| develop PD.
| code_duck wrote:
| My grandmother retired to a farm where she used a ton of
| herbicides and insecticides (endless battle agains fire ants)
| including DDT and who knows what else. She ended up with a
| Parkinson's-like condition - supposedly not Parkinson's, but
| same symptoms. I'm not sure how they determined that.
| rmason wrote:
| Thank you for posting this account. My grandfather had
| Parkinson's and I have followed news on the disease my entire
| life. In my grandfather's case he owned a slaughterhouse (in
| Detroit) and in an accident was hit in the head by a meat hook.
|
| I spent twenty years in the fertilizer industry. I always read
| the chemical sheets on everything we sold. Paraquat which this
| article mentions was the single most toxic herbicide that we
| sold.
|
| My bosses wife got a small amount mixed with water in her hair
| once. She grabbed a comb to try and thin the amount. When she
| stopped combing she examined her comb and it looked like a melted
| glob of plastic. This shocked all of us and she very quickly went
| and washed her hair.
| lyind wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene#Anaesthesia
| burlesona wrote:
| This is saying this chemical is used to decaffeinate coffee. So
| what level of it is left in the resulting coffee beans?
| davidthewatson wrote:
| It's a good question. It's easy to locate Swiss water decaf in
| the US now, but apparently that wasn't true in the mid-80's, so
| the answer depends on when and where the caffeine was extracted
| from the coffee.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/19...
| Reason077 wrote:
| That's a historical use. TCE was banned from food and medical
| uses in the US, including decaf coffee, in 1977.
| selectodude wrote:
| They use supercritical CO2 now.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Only some decaf coffee is made that way, there are actually
| four major methods now for making decaf, only two of them do
| not involve chemicals.
|
| Always research the methods of your decaf coffee vendor
| before you buy!
| stephen_g wrote:
| Technically both water and supercritical CO2 are chemical
| solvents...
| jb1991 wrote:
| That's a bit pedantic in this context. True but that's
| not what we're talking about.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Depends on how the coffee is decaffeinated. Swiss Water
| Process, for instance, literally just uses water. Most other
| methods involve organic solvents of some sort.
| nraynaud wrote:
| Zero, it's highly volatile.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > This is saying this chemical is used to decaffeinate coffee.
|
| Until 50 years ago.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| For those interested most coffee is not decaffeinated with this
| chemical. Most use a critical CO2 process.
| ortusdux wrote:
| *supercritical
| aivisol wrote:
| What about dichloromethane: that was/is used as well?
| Reason077 wrote:
| TCE was, apparently, used to make decaffeinated coffee up until
| the 1970s, when it was banned in most food and medical uses.
| blue1 wrote:
| It was in typewriter corrector fluid. I remember the smell.
| djmips wrote:
| Oh yes! I vividly remember that now that you mention it!
| HollowEyes wrote:
| What hobby products will you find Trichloroethylene in/will be
| exposed to?
| tyingq wrote:
| Page 2 here has some actual brands/products that it's in:
| https://prhe.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra341/f/EDF%20First%...
| Ccecil wrote:
| I had a bottle of this stuff I recently hazmatted. Someone gave
| it to me from the 80's. They used to sell solvents to the
| electronics industry...then the CFC/Ozone regulations caused them
| to require to shut down. He has stories about mixing TCE and
| Freon...55 gallon drums of it. As far as I know he doesn't have
| Parkinsons but that doesn't mean anything.
|
| Apparently, this stuff was great for cleaning electronics PCBs
| but clearly it is super bad for you. I am not sure how you could
| slightly smell it and not realize it...has a very strong "I cause
| cancer" smell to it.
| ekianjo wrote:
| radiations cause cancer and dont smell at all.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _has a very strong "I cause cancer" smell to it_
|
| I second this. I used it to clean electronic systems in the
| military and they did not really give much training on this
| chemical which surprised me as they trained extensively on much
| less dangerous chemicals. Some of my team members liked
| inhaling the fumes.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I am not sure how you could slightly smell it and not realize
| it...has a very strong "I cause cancer" smell to it._
|
| Keep in mind that many people still deliberately inhale the
| products of combustion of tobacco.
|
| I don't smoke, but most chlorocarbons smell _good_ --- clean
| and slightly sweet is how I 'd describe the fragrance.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| Lead paint has a similar problem. It tastes sweet, which is
| why so many children end up eating paint chips.
| Maursault wrote:
| Tobacco companies dump over 300 carcinogenic chemicals into
| cigarettes, called additives, to make them more addictive,
| and which make up half of nearly all cigarettes.[1] _That_ is
| what kills people, smoking carcinogenic chemicals.
| Unadulterated tobacco, such as what pipe smokers use, does
| not actually cause cancer, yet it shouldn 't surprise us why
| cigarette smokers die in droves. The American Lung Associate
| did not discriminate: tobacco is bad! Yet all of this
| information came out during the late 1990's, lawsuit, US v.
| Philip Morris, and yet the settlement permitted tobacco
| companies to continue the practice of poisoning cigarettes.
| Half of the $200B+ settlement was forgiven by the mid-2000s.
|
| But the US Surgeon General had different findings, and the
| only conclusion that we can make is that it is not tobacco
| that kills, only cigarettes: Death rates
| for current pipe smokers were little if at all higher than
| for non-smokers, even with men smoking 10 pipefuls per day
| and with men who had smoked pipes for more than 30 years.[2]
| Among the pipe smokers.... The US mortality ratios are 0.8
| for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers.[3]
|
| Smoking _actual_ tobacco can cause emphysema, not cancer. But
| most commercial tobacco is intentionally poisoned to increase
| the addictiveness of nicotine, and the result is cancer.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdV_1u-TodY&t=13m25s
|
| [2] https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/tobacco/nnbbmq.pdf (No.
| 1103, p.112)
|
| [3] _ibid._ (No. 1103, page 92)
| gorkish wrote:
| With all due respect, the citations aren't helping your
| preposterous argument.
| Maursault wrote:
| It isn't my argument, it is the US Surgeon General's. And
| with all due respect, seems a bit something to believe
| smoking something _without_ more than 300 _known_
| chemical carcinogens causes cancer at the same rate as
| with them. Please think before you post.
| catskul2 wrote:
| > ...Unadulterated tobacco, such as what pipe smokers
| use, does not actually cause cancer
|
| > ...causes cancer at the same rate as with them
|
| I think they're referring to your original claim that
| tobacco smoke, without additives, doesn't cause cancer.
|
| Your later apparent softening of that statement feels
| sneaky. It's significant, and makes all the difference in
| the world.
| Maursault wrote:
| > I think they're referring to your original claim that
| tobacco smoke, without additives, doesn't cause cancer.
|
| Once again I am being attributed something that is not
| mine. It is not my claim, it is the claim of the US
| Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, and I
| stand by the science which claims (i.e. it is not _my_
| claim, it is the claim of the US Surgeon General) that
| pipe smokers who inhale live as long as nonsmokers, and
| pipe smokers that don't inhale live longer than non-
| smokers.
|
| Smoking tobacco that is not _infused with more than 300
| known carcinogens_ does not cause cancer. No one is
| saying smoking is healthy, only that _the cancer rates of
| natural tobacco smokers are non-existent,_ no higher than
| the general population. They 'll just have to deal with
| that fact, that they've been lied to in order to protect
| Big Tobacco's cash cow and methods of making cigarettes
| intentionally more addicting to drive it. Natural
| tobacco, in comparison, has a fraction of the amount of
| nicotine as what's in national brand cigarettes and thus
| is in comparison far less addictive.
|
| I honestly don't care. I just think it's interesting that
| most people believe tobacco causes cancer so strongly,
| and they're provably wrong. It's what they put in
| cigarettes that causes cancer, and I don't know how
| anyone can call that tobacco.
| adrianN wrote:
| I somehow doubt the result that pure tobacco doesn't cause
| cancer, since afaik inhaling any type of smoke causes
| cancer.
| Maursault wrote:
| > inhaling any type of smoke causes cancer
|
| Citation needed by all pot smokers. Just love how
| everyone insists they know absolutely everything and are
| never wrong. Guess what?
| hsartoris wrote:
| It is clear based on the following study that even
| exclusive pipe smoking causes a variety of cancers:
| https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/96/11/853/2520796
|
| It is certainly true that cigarettes are generally more
| carcinogenic. However, your statement that " _actual_
| tobacco can cause emphysema, not cancer " is emphatically
| false.
|
| I would suggest being somewhat less confrontational when
| your primary source on an actively researched topic is from
| 1964. In your words, "[j]ust love how everyone insists they
| know absolutely everything and are never wrong. Guess
| what?"
| Maursault wrote:
| > It is clear based on the following study that even
| exclusive pipe smoking causes a variety of cancers:
|
| That's awesome. Please cite which paragraph mentions
| "natural tobacco," because here "pipe smokers" is
| ambiguous, and even pipe tobacco can be treated to not
| only increase its nicotine content, but also be infused
| with carcinogenic additives to make the final product
| more addictive, and thereby also making it more deadly
| (not due to it's addictiveness directly, but by the
| chemicals that cause it to be more addictive, such as
| adding ammonia), In fact, it is standard practice for
| major brands of pipe tobacco to treat the tobacco to turn
| it into something that should be distinguished as "not
| tobacco," so unless the study distinguishes between
| natural and treated tobacco smokers, it is a flawed
| study.
|
| Is it really so impossible to believe that you were lied
| to and believe total crap? Tobacco, natural tobacco
| without any _carcinogenic chemicals_ added, _does not
| cause cancer._
| sbradford26 wrote:
| IBM had to do a massive cleanup of the stuff at their original
| site in Endicott NY where they made PCBs. The locals call it
| the plume, apparently IBM just dumped Trichloroethylene as well
| as other chemicals on the ground for years in some of their
| buildings.
|
| Timeline of events:
| https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2016/05/20/ti...
|
| EPA Source:
| https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactioncleanups/hazardous-was...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I posted this comment[0], a few weeks ago, about my own
| experience with trichlor.
|
| Nasty stuff, but also very useful, and Those With Money like it.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34887615
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| _And it 's go, boys, go_
|
| _They 'll time your every breath_
|
| _And every day you 're in this place you're two days nearer
| death_
|
| _But you go_
|
| _There 's overtime and bonus opportunities galore_
|
| _The young men like their money and they all come back for
| more_
|
| _But soon you 're knockin' on and you look older than you
| should_
|
| _For every bob made on the job you pay with flesh and blood_
|
| I'm somewhat fascinated by the image the song paints of a
| factory that will happily pay above-market rates for as many
| hours as you care to work there.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I've heard that song before; is it specifically about
| trichloroethylene?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It appears to be about a nylon factory run by Imperial
| Chemical Industries: https://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?p=19619
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