Environmental Question #7 [Substitutions]
Courtesy of Reddit user u/swimThruDirt
Q: What needs to be done to prevent companies from engaging in, "regrettable substitutions"? (subbing out a problematic chemical for a similar but less studied alternative) Like BPA is replaced with BPF and a "BPA Free" sticker
A: Smarter regulatory agencies. Innovation often happens faster in industry than regulators can keep up, so when a company presents a new chemical to government regulators to ask for approval the regulators don't always know what they're looking at. So in cases like that the regulators will ask to be educated on the new chemical and its effects by the company that invented it. On some level this makes sense because presumably the inventor knows more about it than anyone, but of course the inventor is also incentivized to omit or lie about the danger of their invention.
Similar molecules don't always carry the same risks, so if a company tells the government regulators that BPF is safe even when BPA isn't, the government is inclined to believe them unless there is some evidence to the contrary. That's why funding for independent research and environmental regulatory agencies is critically important. If the watchdogs have the time and resources to verify information on their own, they won't need to take companies at their word.
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