=biology
The world has
gotten fatter. Why?
It's definitely related to chemicals. People with the same diets have gotten
fatter. People with the same jobs have gotten fatter. Laboratory animals
have gotten fatter.
Whatever happened started around 1970 in America.
So, what chemicals?
You
can look at correlations, and this is useful information, but everything is
correlated with everything else. It's
very easy to find these correlational studies, which is why you should
search for them yourself to make
sure they're not being cherry-picked by an article's author.
For
example, people at higher altitude
have lower
obesity rates. Now, is this due to population differences? Less oxygen?
Or is it because water flows downhill, and people at lower altitudes have
water that accumulated more contaminants? Studies disagree!
There are
so many variables and cross-correlations that it's impossible to distinguish
correlation from causation without some understanding of the mechanisms. The
human proteome is far from understood, so you just have to have a
general understanding of the kinds of proteins in cells, the kinds of
things they bind to, and what molecules could bind to them in problematic
ways or be metabolized into something harmful.
Fortunately (?) I'm probably in the top 100 people worldwide when it comes to
the relevant molecular toxicology; I wrote
this 6 years ago and my understanding has gotten better since then. And
I'm here to tell you, it's past time to start banning some stuff.
For obesity in particular,
there's a good correlation between soda consumption and obesity. Drinks
would not be carbonated if it wasn't somehow important. Normally people stop
eating sugary things instead of having too much sugar at once. Carbonation
interferes with that; my basis for saying this is drinking some soda and
thinking about it. That may happen because prehistorical humans needed to
eat fermenting fruits before they became inedible, but really the reason
doesn't matter.
So, if you're trying to lose weight, maybe start by
not drinking soda. Don't drink diet soda with artificial sweeteners either:
that messes with your insulin regulation and you can get diabetes. If this
is too much for somebody to do, then I guess they don't really care that
much.
Now then, on to those chemicals. There's a fairly standard list of concerning chemicals that many scientists have been metaphorically shouting about as loud as they can:
- trans fats
- bisphenols
- phthalates
- fluorosurfactants
- brominated diphenyl
ethers
There are also some other problems that are probably caused by synthetic chemicals that recently became widespread, including:
-
declining
testosterone levels in men
-
earlier puberty in girls
Which problems are caused by
which chemicals? Here's a better question: does it matter? They're all bad,
ban them all and see what happens.
It's very easy to replace trans
fats with precipitated palm oil solids. But companies took decades to do
that. They lobbied against requirements, and only went ahead when
governments started banning trans fats anyway. Corporate leadership hates
changing their working formula, even if it's easy.
When Americans
started being concerned about bisphenol A in polycarbonate, the FDA
assured people it's actually safe, and eventually then banned it in
certain products while still saying it's actually probably safe - not
because of anything related to science, just due to public pressure.
Receipts still have lots of BPA in them, except for the BPA-free ones -
which use BPS instead which is just as bad. If you work a retail job and
handle a lot of receipts, maybe you want to wear gloves.
Even when
the EPA bans something, it's a narrow ban that deliberately excludes other
bad stuff that companies say they want to use instead. The EPA started
restricting PFOA and PFOS usage and DuPont just started selling slightly
different fluorosurfactants. The correct thing was a more categorical ban,
but the EPA wasn't going to do that because it would've annoyed DuPont and
top EPA people
want to get jobs there later.
Anyway, the FDA and EPA generally
won't ban stuff unless it's not used yet or there's massive public pressure.
At this point I don't even care about the scientific validity of the
articles that create that pressure; go write some posts about how
fluorosurfactants disrupt natural leylines and crystal formations if that's
what people are into.
I'm sure lobbyists for chemical companies
would whine about all the important applications of these chemicals, so
let's look at some.
fluorosurfactants
Fluorosurfactants are used to increase the stain resistance of things like
carpets and pants. This application is a net negative. Ban it! Ban all
deliberate inclusion of fluorosurfactants in consumer products!
They're used in some firefighting foams. This is completely unnecessary for
fighting forest fires. Ban it! For extinguishing oil spills in eg airports,
AFFF is quite effective. It's possible to replace fluorinated AFFF with
hyperbranched hydrocarbon surfactants; this is a worthwhile research
project.
They're used for emulsion polymerization of teflon. This is
the hardest application to replace, and whether or not it's worthwhile
depends on what you're doing with it.
Teflon coatings for cooking
appliances are a net negative. Ban it!
Teflon tape is pretty useful
for plumbing, and the amount used is pretty small. Allow it!
If you
convert perfluoro fatty acids to ethoxylated perfluoro fatty alcohols, those
are much less hazardous. However, they eventually biodegrade to perfluoro
fatty acids, so this doesn't solve the environmental problem, it just
mitigates direct exposure from consumer products.
Logically, branched
fluorosurfactants might be less problematic. So, I did a google search for
that and found
Tivida which is supposedly less bad. If you need
fluorosurfactants for AFFF or emulsion polymerization, I guess those
branched ones are likely to be somewhat better environmentally. Maybe governments
should even buy out their patents on that.
hydrogenated vegetable oil
Ban it! There are
already alternatives in place for every application so further discussion is
a waste of time.
BPA
Polycarbonate drink
bottles? Unnecessary and bad for you. Ban it! Polycarbonate is sometimes
useful but there's absolutely no need to use it in food containers. They're
also getting replaced by PET copolymers in many applications; their
advantage over PET was often just greater transparency.
Bisphenols
are used in thermal paper for receipts. They're just weak acids with a
certain melting point range and low volatility. If you banned them companies
would figure something out, but they won't unless bisphenols are banned.
Also, inkjet printers are cheap enough for receipts if the ink isn't
overpriced; tank inkjets are cheap enough per page that receipt-sized ones
would be cheap enough for receipts printing.
phthalates
Probably my most radical position here: I think every application of PVC
has alternatives that are better overall, and PVC usage should be
categorically banned.
fire retardants
PBDEs are probably the most-discussed hazardous additive, but there are
other hazardous ones too. A complete list would be long.
They're
often added to polyurethane foam, largely because of regulations in
California that existed because of concerns about cigarattes starting fires.
If you need soft and flexible polyurethane you want to use polyethers which
are flammable, but for most polyurethane foam applications it should work to
instead use polycaprolactone or even isophthalate polyester polyols which
are less flammable. Or you could use a different foam, maybe ionomer foam.
Then you can add mineral particles instead of organic fire retardants, maybe
precipitated calcium carbonate. Ban it!
Lots of PBDEs are added to
plastics in aircraft because the FAA has extreme requirements regarding
flammability of stuff in aircraft. There are other plastics that can be used
instead; those are just more expensive than adding lots of PBDEs. Ban it!