zlacker

>>geox+(OP)
We really need to change the regulations around the introduction of new chemical compounds to our environment on a mass scale.

We keep encountering situations like this where a new chemical compound was introduced, becomes ubiquitous in our diets or environments and only later do we find out "Oops, it has serious health or environmental consequences."

It is worth the cost of slower introduction of new materials to take the time to ensure that those materials are safe. We're still paying the cost of introducing lead into our environment in a myriad of subtle ways. We still don't fully understand what the cost of the introduction of microplastics or PFAS is going to be. And regardless of the whether this particular study holds up under replication it is looking increasingly likely that aspartame is not something we should be consuming.

And what's most frustrating is that the people who profited most from these compounds never pay for the damage they cause to generations.

>>dbingh+55
Lead was introduced into the environment at least as early as the Roman Empire. It’s why we call plumbers plumbers.

How much slower would we have reasonably gone to avoid lead?

>>sokolo+fa
They understood and accepted the risks in that case - as an acceptable trade-off, which is different from the introduction of chemicals or compounds that aren’t well understood.

>>MoOmer+Xb
Are you telling me the Romans knew about the ~15 point IQ decrease lead exposure causes in children?

>>hiAndr+Pc
Not IQ specifically but there were Romans who recognized that lead, and specifically lead pipes, were harmful:

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80 BCE – c. 15 BCE) wrote:

> 10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:--if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome.

> 11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Books_on_Architecture/Boo...