Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?

Jpopy@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 715 points –
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Worth noting companies usually know it's dangerous way before the public does.

The chemicals used in Teflon manufacturing

No, don't you see? They have stopped using PFOA in teflon cookware, it's just PTFE, now. You see, if you just keep doing what you're doing but with another compound it's fine. And time has not shown us over again that chem manufacturers lie, their employees get sick, they dump their waste into waterways, and that they lie again.

One thing you can be sure of is that when they are found out, they will settle for a number that sounds like an amazing record, like $10 billion, but that number will be completely shadowed by their profits from causing harm. So business will always be good.

PTFE is the product, Teflon, not the chemicals they use to make it. PFOA was replaced with another chemical that is basically almost as bad, potentially exactly as bad

Thanks for the correction. Reading a bit more into it, I gathered this: PFOA is (by this point pretty much was) the surfactant in the emulsion polymerization of PTFE, AKA Teflon. And then it's as you say, PFOA is the part of Teflon that was replaced.

Yup, but the chemical they replaced it with is almost exactly the same, and there's not much of a reason to believe it's any safer. Also, it could be safer if they just didn't dump the chemicals, but we all know how that goes.

PTFE is dangerous?

Who knows! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety

I'm not qualified to assess this. I am just aware of the fact that if a company can trade my personal health or the health of the environment and ecosystem for a profit, they will do so. Whether it's fighting regulations for safer trains that carry hazardous chemicals, conducting studies and then promoting a campaign to fight its own findings, or dumping chemicals they already know are hazardous but unregulated, or maybe you will add lead to gasoline to prevent knocking in car engines just because you can sell it better. These people will lie and lie and lie and lie.

So is PTFE dangerous? I just have to assume it is. I don't know.

Well, that's not ideal, my 3D printer has some PTFE tubing and while I mostly print at maximum of 250˚C, there are some materials I wanted to try that need larger temperatures. Thanks for the info!

I assume the tubing part is the Bowden tube? I don't think that will become much warmer than ambient temp.