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
Excuse the nitpick, but the lead Romans used for plumbing was acquired from the environment. The Romans didn't introduce it to the environment, they just moved it from one part of the environment to another. This is different from chemicals which are created for the first time ever by the chemical industry.

Incidentally, the lead wasn't really being mined to make lead pipes. They mined galena for the tiny amount of silver it has and got tons of lead from that.

>>mcpack+Kd
Couldn't you apply that to anything? Why draw the line at 'chemicals' and how do you define that anyway? Or are we only allowed to use elements? Or anything we can find naturally occurring, but not including other things we created by moving naturally occurring things 'from one part of the environment to another'?

Because all of human progress is just building on top of what we've been able to find, then using those things in combination, and those things, and so on until you get to super evil chemical manufacture. Seems like an arbitratry line?

(For what it's worth I cook a lot and buy very little that isn't a 'raw ingredient', I'm not saying this from a 'let me have my ready meals' sort of perspective.)