Gordon

For once, I think we're ± on the same wavelength.

Let me quote two examples of widely used solvents in industry (including 
ours):

1. Trichloroethylene: this has been widely discredited because of a 
pretended carcinogenicity which has been taken into national labelling 
and exposure limit rules. Yet the most serious report (77 A4 pages of 
very critical analysis) states: "Taking all of this information into 
account, it is concluded that exposure to TCE does not present a 
carcinogenic hazard to man at levels of current occupational exposure 
standards." (see the incomplete page at 
http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files/chlorsolv.htm)

2. n-propyl bromide or 1-bromopropane: this solvent can be purchased and 
used with almost no restrictions in most places, yet there are good 
reasons to believe that it can reduce male and female fertility and 
cause permanent neuropathic damage. No official permitted exposure level 
has been promulgated, only a number of recommendations, varying from 1 
ppm to 100 ppm (the latter by some manufacturers!). It is potentially 
very dangerous and is used quite a bit for defluxing. No long-term 
toxicology tests have been conducted and there is little reliable 
epidemiological evidence. It is known that the semi-chronic tests 
conducted on rodents cannot be translated to humans, as the metabolic 
processes are very different in the two species. IOW, thousands of 
workers in industry are being exposed daily to what may be a time bomb. 
Yet this solvent is being heavily promoted also as a substitute for 
trichloroethylene, for which we have certain and sure data from over a 
century of industrial use.

In view of this, something like REACH may help, but I'm pretty sure that 
trichloroethylene will still be classed either as a carcinogen or, at 
least, either a potential carcinogen for man or a known carcinogen for 
rodents (true), implying it is for man (untrue). I'm equally sure that 
nPB will not be any more restricted than it is now, because we have no 
valid data on which to base a judgement. REACH is therefore an attempt 
to cut water with a sword.

OTOH, I would welcome something similar to REACH on condition that:
- each chemical be critically judged on reliable scientific data, 
capable of peer review and not on emotional ecopolitical NGO (or other) 
claptrap
- it be applied rigidly on a world-wide basis through UNEP and the WHO
- any person knowingly providing false data or incorrectly labelling a 
product be deemed as committing a felony
- any chemicals or products made from them or using them from nations 
not conforming to the provisions of the international law be banned from 
import into other countries.

What a pipedream!!!

Brian

Davy, Gordon wrote:
> Mike,
> 
> I respect you and your company, but I must part with you on some of what
> you said in your last posting. You wrote, "I am not sure what is wrong
> with a government asking industry on behalf of its citizens to make sure
> that exposure to the substances used throughout its lifecycle is well
> understood, contained, and controlled.... I am not sure why industry
> should be excused from being responsible for its use of chemical
> substances." Maybe my comments and questions will help in arriving at
> some answers.
> 
> The way that you put it makes it sound like a no-brainer. But if it were
> really that simple, one would have to conclude that REACH opponents must
> have devious motives. Are you prepared to say that explicitly? Then you
> mention that REACH applies to products that have been on the market for
> more than twenty-five years (before 1981), so that alone gives it a
> different flavor. I made some of these points before. They haven't been
> refuted, but maybe they need to be repeated. While I'm directing my
> questions to you, I'd welcome responses from anyone.
> 
> *    To say that you aren't sure why industry should be excused from
> being responsible for its use of chemical substances is to employ a
> rhetorical device called a straw man. Demolish the straw man, demolish
> your opponents' position. Do you really mean to characterize REACH
> opponents as believing that? Would you care to see such a casual
> characterization of your position?
> 
> *    A little over fifty years ago a huge issue in the US was loyalty
> oaths. It was proposed that every citizen should be required to sign
> such an oath. The argument went, "If you don't have anything to hide,
> why would you mind signing?" Just as today company leaders are afraid to
> oppose any environmental legislation lest their company be labeled
> "anti-environment," back then people were afraid to oppose a mandated
> loyalty oath lest they be labeled "soft on communism." Would you say
> that manufacturers who believe that their products are "well understood,
> contained, and controlled" shouldn't object to proving it?
> 
> *    Legislation should develop from reasoned discourse, not from
> coercion by demagogues and dogma-driven legislators who are not
> accountable to anyone. From my perspective, European cultures seem not
> to have a firm grasp on what representative government is all about. Or,
> since the Magna Carta came from one part of Europe, they have lost the
> idea of limiting government power,. Certainly much of the heritage of
> European countries is totalitarianism. The EU leaders seem to be
> positively reveling in their influence on the whole rest of the world
> through their environmental directives. Don't you notice much more glee
> about their ability to coerce than pride of accomplishment in reducing
> the cost of public health, which was supposedly the intent but is never
> mentioned (since that would be a means for assessing the value of their
> legislation)?
> 
> And lest someone object that I am injecting politics into what is
> supposed to be an engineering forum, I will counter by saying that it is
> the EU legislators who are injecting politics into engineering and
> manufacturing, for no discernible benefit beyond their own. To ignore
> the political aspects of legislation like RoHS and REACH is to ignore
> the elephant in the room. 
> 
> *    We should recognize that "the government" is still just people who
> are corruptible and some of whom are corrupt. Some make no pretense of
> being impartial towards industry. You say that industry isn't always
> magnanimous and forthright. Obviously true. But why should anyone trust
> governments - particularly a non-representative government capable of
> giving us RoHS - to be any more responsible than corporations? From
> which is it easier to get relief? 
> 
> *    To discuss risk without discussing cost is foolish, yet for
> environmental issues it is the norm. No one can afford to reduce risk
> beyond some threshold - one has to make choices. I have heard that it
> has become much more difficult to purchase ammonium nitrate - a
> fertilizer that also functions as an explosive. Despite the
> inconvenience to farmers, this was no doubt a wise move for public
> health. But not all restrictions have such an obvious benefit. Choices
> have consequences, not all of them foreseeable. So to allow rational
> choices, the discussion needs to address the trade-offs explicitly.
> People differ in their risk tolerance, so there will have to be
> compromise. The discussion should not be cast as greedy and
> irresponsible industrialists vs. "think of the children." It's really
> give and take: "If we took this, what would we have to give up and is it
> worth it?" 
> 
> Those 1000 substances you refer to that are going to disappear from the
> market must have had some use up to now or they would not be on the
> market. Do you know that any of them has been so much as suspected of
> being a problem for health or the environment in all the years that it
> has been used? In what way will the world be a better place because they
> are gone? Will the world be a better place because of the process that
> has caused them to disappear?
> 
> *    An obvious example of cost-benefit analysis is tobacco. Even the EU
> doesn't have the clout (yet) to protect its citizens from this substance
> which is obviously unsafe when used as intended. Its continued presence
> on the market indicates that a trade-off has been made. It's worth
> considering what the consequences of removing it would be. Presumably
> there would be reduced cost of public health due to fewer people
> smoking. Almost as predictable would be a consumer revolt - even
> European citizens must have some limit to their acceptance of tyrannical
> edicts for their own good. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe with the present
> "global trend" towards government protecting people from all evils,
> imagined as well as real, European tobacco addicts will some day have to
> smuggle their cigarettes and European governments will have to find some
> other source of tax revenue. A similar argument holds for alcoholic
> beverages. 
> 
> As an aside, I can't resist wondering about a culture that so passively
> tolerates the governmental abuse of power that is becoming increasingly
> evident. A government that continues unabated despite the votes of no
> confidence their draft constitution received from ordinary citizens in
> those countries where they were given a chance to be heard. I will say
> it again: how bad do things have to get? But maybe I need some diversity
> indoctrination.
> 
> For more conventional grandfathered substances, who would vote for REACH
> or any proposed measure that didn't identify and document the problem it
> was purported to fix? I think that it is significant that, as in the
> case of RoHS, the discussion all seems to center on risk of damage that
> might happen rather than on damage that is happening. That line of
> argumentation is disingenuous. Everyone acknowledges that REACH is going
> to be expensive. How many people know how many lives it is going to
> save, or what will be the reduction in the cost of public health?
> Recognizing that few subscribers to this forum are public health
> experts, I will still ask - has anyone seen any such estimate? 
> 
> *    There is a legal concept of "least restrictive means." The idea is
> that once it has been established that the government has a valid
> interest in regulating a matter, it should choose the means to meet the
> need that imposes the least restrictive requirements. Here, the question
> of need is not whether citizens need to be protected from dangerous
> chemicals but whether it has been established that the present level of
> protection is inadequate. For this there appears to be a significant
> difference of opinion. It has long been established that companies bear
> tort responsibility for the safety as well as suitability for use of the
> products they put on the market. That responsibility even extends to
> "foreseeable misuse." That responsibility alone protects the public from
> the most dangerous substances. Where's the evidence that that's not
> enough? It won't do to trot out scare stories from decades ago, such as
> using tetraethyl lead to raise the octane rating of gasoline because it
> could be patented and other suitable substitutes couldn't. Everyone
> agrees that was criminally negligent. But that was long ago. Document
> that the present system is allowing today a problem so serious that a
> remedy is warranted. Then show that less expensive and less restrictive
> remedies would be inadequate.
> 
> *    What does "make sure" mean? As Werner pointed out, it's impossible
> to prove a negative. Surely what REACH contemplates is more than just
> prescribing that a substance be subjected to a battery of scientific
> test procedures each of whose outcome is unambiguous and whose pass-fail
> criterion is well established. There are strong emotions and dogmas at
> work. I'll mention again the determined opposition of die-hard opponents
> of deca-BDE, who seem to have some special revelation, known only to
> them and trumping a decade of scientific evidence, that this stuff is
> too dangerous to tolerate. A REACH that doesn't silence these zealots is
> a REACH that will cause far more problems than it solves.
> 
> *    When REACH has run its course and done its damage, there will still
> be opportunities for mischief. What consideration has been given to
> possible synergistic effects of substances? Who can say that not only
> are substance A and substance B each harmless by themselves, they are
> still harmless when both are present in a person or the environment at
> ten parts per trillion or the prevailing limit of detection? Or A and B
> and C... And don't expect "common sense" to be a suitable response.
> There is clearly a dearth of that.
> 
> *    Next, as for NGOs having some good ideas, I think that it would be
> fitting for you to share some of their relevant ones on this forum.
> Identify the source of each idea you share so we can see for ourselves.
> You say also that "it's good for both sides to understand each other."
> Certainly no one has all the answers, and to the extent that an
> organization wishes to promote those ideas by rational discourse instead
> of demagoguery, we should welcome theirs. 
> 
> It would be good if we could get them to distance themselves from the
> irresponsible behavior of others. So to help me understand them I would
> like to ask each environmental NGO to subscribe to this statement: "Our
> interest is promoting by public discussion practical measures that would
> reduce the cost of public health. We repudiate and dissociate ourselves
> from any organization that uses deceptive claims to promote their agenda
> or whose express or implied intent is to rid the biosphere of toxic
> substances." Is that like a loyalty oath? Maybe, but if they won't do
> that, I don't think I would have much I'd care to discuss with them.
> What common ground could we find? We wouldn't be discussing the
> environment or public health, but philosophy, and it's unlikely we would
> be able to agree on that. 
> 
> Since you say you have contact with some NGOs, why not get their
> response to my proposal? That would show how open they are to ideas,
> too. Some time back I approached the leader of a state "public-interest"
> NGO to discuss lead in electronic products. I said that I had been
> following the matter for a long time and was interested in getting a
> response to my ideas from a different perspective. I was as polite as I
> could be (no sarcasm), but I was forthright in my assertions. We talked
> for two hours. He did not refute any of my assertions nor was he able to
> produce any evidence to support his. At the end he was so upset that he
> asked me to leave. I have sent him emails since, but he has never
> acknowledged any of them. You probably wouldn't want to invite me to any
> meetings with your NGO acquaintances.
> 
> As an aside, years ago I participated in an industry association
> environmental issues task group (not IPC). The other participants were
> representatives of large manufacturers of industrial and consumer
> electronic equipment. They were environmental issues decision-makers who
> were responsible for their companies' interests in this area. As they
> discussed government-mandated (consumer-citizen subsidized) recycling of
> electronic products (i.e., the best way to extract the subsidy), they
> said that they were being proactive. I questioned that, saying that the
> whole notion of recycling electronic products came from environmental
> activists without evidence of need. There seemed to be common agreement
> that as long as the recycling rules didn't favor one manufacturer over
> another, it was OK or even good. Their concern was simply to minimize
> any unfairness and inconvenience to their companies. I tried to promote
> my ideas about its wastefulness. I got the same response I get from this
> forum when I try to make the case against coerced recycling - no
> refutation, but no evidence of anyone agreeing with me, either. 
> 
> But quite unlike this forum, in that case I was made to feel quite
> unwelcome and out of place. I have thick skin. It's hard to hurt my
> feelings and I often miss social cues (facial expressions, body
> language, etc.) but there the hostility was obvious. I quit attending.
> So I have not found environmental NGOs that welcome ideas from all
> "stakeholders." They seem to believe that, paraphrasing George Orwell,
> all ideas are equal, but some are more equal than others.
> 
> *    In conclusion, it is entirely possible that some of the substances
> present in the environment do cause long-term harm. For whatever reason,
> cancer is more common than it used to be. But proving that something
> doesn't cause cancer is virtually impossible. And thinking of cancer, it
> has been proposed that one cause is nanoparticles of rubber and carbon
> put into the air by tire wear. The particles lodge in the lungs, where
> they act as a chronic irritant. It's obvious that not all of a tire's
> tread turns into carbon dioxide and water vapor. Yet one doesn't see
> along roadways a black path of particles that have been abraded away, so
> what becomes of the rest? Suppose a connection were established - how
> many additional cases of cancer per year from this cause would it take
> to remove tires from the market? Given a plausible mechanism, would the
> Precautionary Principle demand that they be removed until it can be
> proved that there is no causal relationship? Refer to the discussions
> above about cigarettes and trade-offs. 
> 
>  
> 
> Gordon Davy 
> 
> 
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