<story><title>Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-pascagoula-pollution-future-cancer-risk</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>myshpa</author><text>Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary.&lt;p&gt;Not necessary:&lt;p&gt;- plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola&amp;#x27;s profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass)&lt;p&gt;- food wrappers (use paper &amp;amp; natural wax, not pfoas)&lt;p&gt;- plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma&amp;#x27;s did)&lt;p&gt;- eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?)&lt;p&gt;- tea bags made with plastic (yes, they&amp;#x27;re there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)&lt;p&gt;- tooth brushes (what&amp;#x27;s wrong with wood&amp;#x2F;bamboo ?)&lt;p&gt;- textiles ( cotton &amp;#x2F; hemp &amp;#x2F; flax. you think you need to run in modern textiles because it&amp;#x27;s raining ? stay home, i don&amp;#x27;t need your pfoas in my water )&lt;p&gt;- polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp &amp;#x2F; hempcrete)&lt;p&gt;- fishing nets (70% of macro plastic at sea comes from fishing gear, just eat plants people, there are not that many fish left anyway)&lt;p&gt;Necessary:&lt;p&gt;- health care&lt;p&gt;- what have i forgot?&lt;p&gt;Better to stop producing the crap, than to have to find ways how to utilize it without harming everything and everybody. It&amp;#x27;s good only for the packaging industry, nobody else.</text></comment>
<story><title>Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-pascagoula-pollution-future-cancer-risk</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>photochemsyn</author><text>The most ridiculous part of the EPA approach:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;But the agency won’t turn over these records or reveal information about the waste-based fuels, even their names and chemical structures. Without those basic details, it’s nearly impossible to determine which of the thousands of consent orders on the EPA website apply to this program. In keeping this information secret, the EPA cited a legal provision that allows companies to claim as confidential any information that would give their competitors an advantage in the marketplace.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no explanation of this other than regulatory capture.  Might want to look into how many people from the EPA Chevron has been hiring as consultants etc., or how much money Chevron has been giving to politicians who approve EPA heads, the hiring practices of EPA heads, and so on.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d guess much of the problem is that they only partially breakdown the plastics into the desired long-chain hydrocarbons that make up the jet fuel, so there&amp;#x27;s likely a big pile of partially-broked down plastics that they then have to dispose of, which is a likely source of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and so on, plus dioxin which is particularly problematic as a hormone mimic and disruptor of basic cellular processes (see Agent Orange, Vietnam):&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Dioxin formation during combustion of nonchloride plastic, polystyrene and its product&amp;quot; (2005)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;16097324&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;16097324&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>