Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act

[Pointedstick]

What do the resident chemists and chemical engineers think of this bill? (I already know what the libertarians and anarchists think of it )
It just unanimously passed the Senate.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-con ... 7/all-info

[Libertarian666]

What do the resident chemists and chemical engineers think of this bill? (I already know what the libertarians and anarchists think of it )
It just unanimously passed the Senate.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-con ... 7/all-info

Ok, tell us what the anarchists think about it.

This should be good. 

[Mountaineer]

What do the resident chemists and chemical engineers think of this bill? (I already know what the libertarians and anarchists think of it )
It just unanimously passed the Senate.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-con ... 7/all-info

If this standard were to apply equally to everyone and every organization (including government) in the United States, we would have no more nuclear powered anything (weapons, reactors, ships, submarines, satellites, smoke detectors, etc.), no more tobacco use, no more beer wine or liquor, much spoiled food, and on, and on, and on.  We would have food shortages, building materials shortages, mass starvation, and a revolution.  This is my initial "knee jerk" reaction upon reading such a pile of horseshxx by a typical do-gooder who is clueless about the consequences.  I have not studied the bill in depth. 

Key excerpts from the bill:
The standard includes the protection of potentially exposed or susceptible populations. The standard does not take cost or other non-risk factors into consideration. The bill repeals the requirement that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) apply the least burdensome means of adequately protecting against unreasonable risk from chemicals.

The EPA must prohibit or restrict the manufacture, processing, use, distribution, or disposal of a new chemical, or a significant new use of an existing chemical,

If a chemical does not meet the safety standard, the EPA must impose restrictions to assure that it meets the standard, or ban or phase out the chemical when the safety standard cannot be met with the application of those restrictions.

... M

[Pointedstick]

I see. It all makes sense now. The big chemical companies probably fear state regulation more than federal regulation due to the EPA's general toothlessness, corruptibility, and centralization. Easier to neutralize one agency rather than 50. Market regulatory uniformity probably makes their lives easier, too.

Relatedly, I find it sad that this kind of thing is seen as necessary in the first place. Why do chemical companies sell products with such nasty crap in them? For decades there has been a constant stream of stories about companies that have grossly disregarded the safety of their customers as well as their own employees, causing poisonings, birth defects, behavioral problems, waterway contamination, you name it. Is it really just hard to tell when something is going to turn out to be harmful, or is this gross negligence?

In particular, a huge amount of the problem chemicals seem to prominently feature chlorine or fluorine. Is it really that hard to avoid using these highly reactive elements?

[Pointedstick]

Generally speaking, I don't think the chemical industry sells products to consumers that are unsafe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluoro ... h_concerns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol ... th_effects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brominate ... ety_issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroflu ... al_impacts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde#Safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Toxicity

Those are just the first few that immediately popped into my head, and they're incredibly ubiquitous chemicals.

You are right, in that some kind of massive screw-up (affecting either the public or workers) would be extremely detrimental to the industry, and the industry knows it.

Are the above examples massive screw-ups? The whole attitude of the chemical industry, from the perspective of someone not in it, seems to be:

"Hey, look at this new wonder chemical! Here, we put it in everything we sell because it's cheap, effective, and easy to synthesize! What are the health effects, you say? We have no reason to believe that it poses any risks to human health.*"
* Actually various people knew from day one that it was incredibly dangerous but kept this information from others in the company or from the public

However, the reality is that projecting *long term* health effects of anything is very difficult.  Just look at changing dietary recommendations over time.

That I can believe. But in a lot of these cases, people knew before the products were on the market that they were dangerous, or found out while they were still being sold and did not warn anyone or change the formulation. The comparison to FDA recommendations might be less charitable to your point than you're imagining since those recommendations have been molded and manipulated away from truly healthy outcomes by industry groups from the start.

[Pet Hog]

PS, I don't think any of the products you listed (BPA, CFCs, lead paint) were developed with the knowledge that they have adverse effects.  But there was no FDA-equivalent demanding testing, at the time, to find out.  In hindsight, yeah, a lot of those things suck and should be removed from the marketplace.

Regarding your earlier question about chlorine and fluorine found in many questionable molecules, these atoms are cheap, small, highly electronegative, and rarely found in natural organic molecules.  As a result, they impart interesting chemical properties (think DDT, PVC, Teflon, Prozac) to small molecules and polymers that are cheap to prepare, easy to patent, and difficult to degrade biologically.

Off-topic:  I was looking up some examples of chlorinated pharmaceuticals and found this interesting story of unintended consequences about the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac.  When it was introduced as a veterinary drug in India, the vultures that fed on the carcasses of the treated livestock died off as a result of renal failure.  These vultures had formerly controlled the populations of rats and feral animals.  But then...

The resulting multiplication of feral dogs in India and Pakistan has caused a multiplication of leopards feeding on those dogs and invading urban areas looking for dogs as prey, resulting in occasional attacks on human children.

Oops.  So some schmuck in a lab made a compound, the FDA approved it, and then some kids got attacked by wild cats.  Yay, chemistry!  (I was trained as a chemist, myself, so I feel the pain.)

[Mountaineer]

Relatedly, I find it sad that this kind of thing is seen as necessary in the first place. Why do chemical companies sell products with such nasty crap in them?

For decades there has been a constant stream of stories about companies that have grossly disregarded the safety of their customers as well as their own employees, causing poisonings, birth defects, behavioral problems, waterway contamination, you name it. Is it really just hard to tell when something is going to turn out to be harmful, or is this gross negligence?

In particular, a huge amount of the problem chemicals seem to prominently feature chlorine or fluorine. Is it really that hard to avoid using these highly reactive elements?

Why is it necessary?  I'm not a chemical industry historian, but I think it is fair to say that recognition and mitigation of safety hazards was not as good 50 years ago as it is today.  So, in some sense, I think today's TSCA is partly a "signaling".  Generally speaking, I don't think the chemical industry sells products to consumers that are unsafe.  You are right, in that some kind of massive screw-up (affecting either the public or workers) would be extremely detrimental to the industry, and the industry knows it.

However, the reality is that projecting *long term* health effects of anything is very difficult.  Just look at changing dietary recommendations over time.

Yes, many chlorinated and fluorinated substances are nasty nasty nasty.  But, truth be told, it is the harnessing of the nasty crap which makes production of safe crap possible.

I'm going to echo Tenn a bit on this.  My experience is based on one large chemical company, where I worked for over 30 years and the businesses I was associated with (not every business in the Company).  I worked in various manufacturing, research, management, and technical assignments as well as a lengthy stint in safety/occupational health/environmental, SHE, positions.  My comments:  my company NEVER once during that time period asked me or anyone that I knew to do anything even a tiny bit unethical - it was actually the reverse where everyone from the lowest level employee to the highest management position were expected to "broadcast" if we thought anything was unsafe or saw some one operating unsafely.  We went to great lengths to assure the products being sold to consumers were safe.  We had a huge facility where all sorts of tests were done to assess human or environmental impact before anything was approved for production.  Generally, the hazardous chemicals were used as raw materials or intermediates and not sold to the general public.  Employees were well trained in how to handle hazardous chemicals safely.  Hazardous insecticides (meaning they had to be used in accordance with label guidelines and applied by licensed people and used by well educated farmers) were an exception to the hazardous end products.  In general, very, very few end products had nasty crap in them and those that did were restricted on who they could be sold to.  The bottom line is good safety/enviro performance makes money - it is not a drag on earnings, at least for my company. 

From my various roles, I would say that the company went to extraordinary lengths to assure safety of employees, the public surrounding our facilities, and the end users of our products.  Were we perfect?  No.  Many times after additional information became available after the products were in use for a while, the products would have either the use instructions modified or the product would be pulled from the market place - all without government intervention.  The internal SHE people, research, techincal, and manufacturing employees tended to be FAR more knowledgable of problems, issues, safety, practical solutions, etc. than any EPA or OSHA inspector that I interacted with.  Of all the SHE laws, I personally felt TSCA was the weakest - lots of cost and very little benefit to either employees or the public, at least to my company.  However, I last worked for this company 15 years ago so my data is old and I do not know if the SHE values that had been ingrained over many, many decades held firm after I left. 

My first post in response to the Act was due to the wording.  It seemed there was little understanding of benefits to society, risk to society, and the probability of various things happening.  Our modern high standard of living society is based on chemicals, everything from toothpaste and baby formula to car components, aircraft components, firefighter and police safety gear,  lubricants, plastics, etc., etc.  The list is almost endless.  I just think "chemical phobia", although real to some people, is a misguided fear.  Mention the word nuclear or cyanide to people and you will see what I mean.  Pretty much anything can be handled safely and the most innocuous material can be handled unsafely, even water, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide - all components of our body. 

Rant over.

... M

[Pointedstick]

I definitely try not to be a chemophobe and keep in mind that life is full of risks, and that chemical advances have made a lot of amazing things possible. However, there are a large number of well-documented cases of chemical compounds that were dangerous to end users or the people manufacturing them were produced for decades and decades after this fact was known, far after safer alternatives existed and were feasible to substitute. A few examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History

The dangers of lead paint were considered well-established by the beginning of the 20th century. In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors."[4] As early as 1886, German health laws prohibited women and children from working in factories processing lead paint and lead sugar.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid

In the fall of 2000, lawyer Rob Bilott, a partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, won a court order forcing DuPont to share all documentation related to PFOA. This included 110,000 files, consisting of confidential studies and reports conducted by DuPont scientists over decades. By 1993, DuPont understood that "PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals" and the company began to investigate alternatives. However, products manufactured with PFOA were such an integral part of DuPont's earnings, $1 billion in annual profit, they chose to continue using PFOA.[9] Billott learned that both "3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades," and by 1961 DuPont was aware of hepatomegaly in mice fed with PFOA.[9][11][12]
[...]
Rob Bilott exposed how DuPont had been knowingly polluting water with PFOAs in Parkersburg, West Virginia since the 1980s.[9] In the 1980s and 1990s researchers investigated the toxicity of PFOA.[12]
[...]
In 1999, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) ordered companies to examine the effects of perfluorinated chemicals after receiving data on the global distribution and toxicity of PFOS.[16] For these reasons, and USEPA pressure,[17] in May 2000, 3M announced the phaseout of the production of PFOA, PFOS, and PFOS-related products—the company's best-selling repellent.[18] 3M stated that they would have made the same decision regardless of USEPA pressure.[19]

Yeah, I'll bet they would have.


These products and compounds are now banned or stigmatized out of existence, of course. But it was because of government regulation or public outrage, not any kind of outbreak of ethics on the part of the people running the companies that produced them. Burdensome regulations don't appear out of thin air. They get called for when crap like this happens. The best way to forestall regulation is to avoid abusing the public trust.

An additional concern is that the specific long-term effects of a lot of these things are not well-understood before they enter the marketplace--and therefore the biosphere. A lot of things are later found to be toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative, etc. But by that point it's too late, and the stuff is in the water supply, the soil, the air… I mean, the xenoestrogens in common types of plastics may be responsible for feminizing the entire population. For most end users of chemical products invented in the last 60 years or so, the benefits are obvious while the risks are hidden. That's really the problem. You could be poisoning yourself, or contaminating your land, or contributing to groundwater pollution or the death of all the bees or the feminization of the population and not even realize it.

[Mountaineer]

I definitely try not to be a chemophobe and keep in mind that life is full of risks, and that chemical advances have made a lot of amazing things possible. However, there are a large number of well-documented cases of chemical compounds that were dangerous to end users or the people manufacturing them were produced for decades and decades after this fact was known, far after safer alternatives existed and were feasible to substitute. A few examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint#History

The dangers of lead paint were considered well-established by the beginning of the 20th century. In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors."[4] As early as 1886, German health laws prohibited women and children from working in factories processing lead paint and lead sugar.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid

In the fall of 2000, lawyer Rob Bilott, a partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, won a court order forcing DuPont to share all documentation related to PFOA. This included 110,000 files, consisting of confidential studies and reports conducted by DuPont scientists over decades. By 1993, DuPont understood that "PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals" and the company began to investigate alternatives. However, products manufactured with PFOA were such an integral part of DuPont's earnings, $1 billion in annual profit, they chose to continue using PFOA.[9] Billott learned that both "3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades," and by 1961 DuPont was aware of hepatomegaly in mice fed with PFOA.[9][11][12]
[...]
Rob Bilott exposed how DuPont had been knowingly polluting water with PFOAs in Parkersburg, West Virginia since the 1980s.[9] In the 1980s and 1990s researchers investigated the toxicity of PFOA.[12]
[...]
In 1999, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) ordered companies to examine the effects of perfluorinated chemicals after receiving data on the global distribution and toxicity of PFOS.[16] For these reasons, and USEPA pressure,[17] in May 2000, 3M announced the phaseout of the production of PFOA, PFOS, and PFOS-related products—the company's best-selling repellent.[18] 3M stated that they would have made the same decision regardless of USEPA pressure.[19]

Yeah, I'll bet they would have.


These products and compounds are now banned or stigmatized out of existence, of course. But it was because of government regulation or public outrage, not any kind of outbreak of ethics on the part of the people running the companies that produced them. Burdensome regulations don't appear out of thin air. They get called for when crap like this happens. The best way to forestall regulation is to avoid abusing the public trust.

An additional concern is that the specific long-term effects of a lot of these things are not well-understood before they enter the marketplace--and therefore the biosphere. A lot of things are later found to be toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative, etc. But by that point it's too late, and the stuff is in the water supply, the soil, the air… I mean, the xenoestrogens in common types of plastics may be responsible for feminizing the entire population. For most end users of chemical products invented in the last 60 years or so, the benefits are obvious while the risks are hidden. That's really the problem. You could be poisoning yourself, or contaminating your land, or contributing to groundwater pollution or the death of all the bees or the feminization of the population and not even realize it.

PS,

I will not dispute anything you said because much can come to light after years of use of products by thousands of users.  I would ask you to consider this:

I am familar with one product that allegedly caused problems to commercial greenhouse users of a product.  The product ultimately was pulled from the marketplace due to public outcry.  In the greenhouse cases, it was found by investigative agencies and internal company investigations the greenhouse owners had applied the product at over 100 times the product label stated use.  The company had over 100 phD scientlsts working for over a year to determine if there was a previously unknown problem with the material - there was not.  The product had been used successfully without any issues for a couple of decades.  Greenhouse owners took the company to court, even though they were the ones who had missused the product.  Sympathetic jurors who could not be conviced of the actual facts (according to company scientists and governmental experts) awarded over a billion dollars of awards to various groups just because they assumed "big business" was evil.  Long term consequence - an effective, very low environmental impact, very safe to humans product is gone.  Food supply is not as safe for consumers as it was before.  My perspective, a tragedy, due to greed of growers who misused the product.  Yes, this is only one case but is likely representative of many cases.  Bottom, be VERY VERY suspicious of what you hear on the news or read in the papers.  As the X-Files would say, "the truth is out there", but it is very hard to illuminate, or get the general public to understand.

Second rant over. 

... M

[Mountaineer]

These products and compounds are now banned or stigmatized out of existence, of course. But it was because of government regulation or public outrage, not any kind of outbreak of ethics on the part of the people running the companies that produced them. Burdensome regulations don't appear out of thin air. They get called for when crap like this happens. The best way to forestall regulation is to avoid abusing the public trust.

An additional concern is that the specific long-term effects of a lot of these things are not well-understood before they enter the marketplace--and therefore the biosphere. A lot of things are later found to be toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative, etc. But by that point it's too late, and the stuff is in the water supply, the soil, the air… I mean, the xenoestrogens in common types of plastics may be responsible for feminizing the entire population. For most end users of chemical products invented in the last 60 years or so, the benefits are obvious while the risks are hidden. That's really the problem. You could be poisoning yourself, or contaminating your land, or contributing to groundwater pollution or the death of all the bees or the feminization of the population and not even realize it.

I am certainly sympathetic to your points here, especially the unknowable long-term effects.  I don't really have an alternative solution in mind.

I note that this conversation is quite cock-eyed compared to each of our usual outlooks: You are cheering government intervention, I'm sticking up for corporate interests, and Mountaineer is ignoring man's inherent sinfulness!

Tenn, interesting observation. 

I am not sure about the very latest testing protocols to assess long-term effects of products.  I do know that my company used animal tests (mice, rats, rabbits) as well as all the other type tests to determine human impact while I worked there; the animals were treated as ethically as possible.  Mice, for example, have a much shorter life span than humans    and thus generational studies of chemical exposure effects could be completed in a reasonable length of time.  Was that protocol perfect?  I certainly doubt it, but I do know the protocol helped prevent many mutagenic, teratogenic, and carcinogenic products from entering the market place. 

HOWEVER, the impact of the animal rights groups have likely had a negative impact on animal studies, studies that were intended for the good of humans (another unintended consequence of perhaps misinformed do-gooders who do not elevate the worth of humans above animals, trees, and planet).  Another bottom line comment:  Be very wary of products you see on the supermarket shelf that proudly display "no animal testing was used".  That may not be as good of news as you think; it is mainly a marketing ploy to appeal to the clueless.  As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of those who place the welfare of animals and plants above the welfare of humans. 

My personal opinion is as much information should be developed about new products (whether chemical, biological, mechanical, or drugs) as practical before introducing them to the market.  Risk, benefits, and potential consequences should be well understood.  It is much easier to do that in a community of scientists and engineers than in a community of the general public.  Where the rub comes is the general public does not like "my risk, your benefit" products but is generally willing to accept "my risk, my benefit" products.  Thus we drive cars, take drugs, eat food, and enjoy the latest iPhone.  We are not so keen on having a railcar of hydrogen cyanide pass though our neighborhood (my risk, your benefit).  One of the primary jobs of a plant manager is to educate the local community about plant operations and answer all question from the community, especially the activist type groups and press - our company really did practice transparency while I worked there.  From my personal perspective, one of the highest risk operations the general public is exposed to is the use of chlorine to treat water supplies and assure our swimming pools are safe.  Just think of the "highly trained, caring, cautious" high school student who is baby sitting the chlorine system at your local pool; what would he/she do if there were an emergency?    There are ways to mitigate this type risk.  For example, many of our plant sites that had water treatement systems that switched from chlorine to sodium hypochlorite; higher raw material cost but lowers the potentially huge downside consequences of a chlorine release.  All without the government telling us to do so (sorry PS, could not resist). 

... M

[jafs]

It is a funny turn of events here!

I'm with PS - there are too many documented cases of industry developing and using things that were known to be harmful.

[Pointedstick]

All I'm really wishing for is more ethical behavior on the part of executives, really. Government regulation is a blunt and usually ineffective instrument, only called for after there's been a major breach of public trust. If you don't breach the public trust in the first place, you probably won't get regulated.

To be specific, a great many many chemical products seem to release their harmful constituents in alarmingly common situations: when exposed to UV radiation, when heated to common dishwasher temperatures, when immersed in water, when scraped against an abrasive and aerosolized, when chewed on by a toddler, when exposed to a flame, when buried in acidic or alkaline soil conditions, etc. Failure to anticipate these incredibly common use cases--and abuse cases--is pretty galling and speaks to a lack of seriousness in attempting to understand the real-world conditions in which products are actually used.

The basic problem is that the field of organic chemistry has produced countless compounds that have no long history in the human consciousness, and as a result, there is no body of human familiarity with them and normal people don't automatically understand what's safe to do with them and what's not. By contrast, we pretty much know what wood does. We've been using it for millions of years. Even many of the different species of woods are fairly well understood by even normal people who don't really know much about forestry or materials science. The same goes for metal and stone. These are familiar materials. We know that in general, wood will burn when exposed to a flame, but metal and stone will not. That metal will heat up and cool down quickly. That most stones are safe to leave exposed to the elements, but only some metals and woods are. That in the presence of water, unprotected iron-based metals will rust, many woods will rot and grow mold, but stones are unaffected. And so on.

But none of this is intrinsically true for the products of organic chemistry. How in the world am I supposed to know what polyurethane will do in the sun long-term if stored or used outdoors? Can something made of polylactic acid be safely washed in the dishwasher? Is acrinonitrile butadiene styrene appropriate for an application where rough pieces will be scraping over one another? Can safely I harvest rainwater from a metal roof painted with polyvinylidene fluoride? What if the water is mildly acidic?

Really it's just the organic chemists I pick on. Inorganic chemistry has given us amazingly improved ceramic and masonry materials, and metallurgical chemists have given us super-steels and other metals with incredible properties. For the most part, their work is easily understandable to be improvements to things people are already basically familiar with. The burden to the public on the backs of organic chemists is much higher because of the total unfamiliarity of their work. Nobody has any idea of the properties of the myriad carbon-based polymer compounds they create. To me this means there is a greater duty to ensure the durability and safety of their products in reasonably anticipated uses of the product. For example, if it is not completely unreasonable for a user of the end product to wash it at high heat in the dishwasher if it gets vomit or poop all over it, then it should not be made out of a polymer that deforms or leaches out harmful substances when exposed to PH 6-8 water and 170f heat. If a flame retardant must be added to it to make it safe in its common use case, then the flame retardant must not in any way leach out or be bioavailable if the product may come into contact with children. And maybe it shouldn't be made out of plastic in the first place, eh?

[Pointedstick]

Working in tech, a trend I observe is that some of my colleagues are so into tech itself that they become extremely enamored of all of the clever things they can do with it and all the cool features they can create, sometimes to the detriment of the end result. The actual ways that the end user will interact with these features is often an afterthought, despite the fact that this is arguably the most important part. We're making it for them, after all. But a great many privilege clever coding tricks, their favorite esoteric database system, whizzy visual effects, and "elegant" user interfaces that can be highly confusing.

I suspect a similar thing is true for many technical, professional fields. The work you're doing is just so cool that it's easy to get caught up in your own expertise and lose sight of the fact that you're making something for people who have none of that expertise. You know that it's a dumb idea to immerse a chemical compound in mildly acidic high temperature water, but how is anyone else supposed to know?

To a certain extent this is unavoidable, but I view it as part of the responsibility that comes with expertise. You are given great power over things that affect other people; you'd better understand those people and their needs, wants, and behaviors or else you're going to end up frustrating or hurting them.

[Mountaineer]

PS,

Ethical executives are a vanishing breed.  In my opinion the main cause is the shift from long-term thinking and programs to short-term profit pressures brought on by "Wall Street" and the education by "Wall Street" of the average Joe to look at his portfolio hourly.  I saw this shift from long-term to short-term focus occur in the company I worked for - it went from being a primarily family run operation to a public one some 50 years ago.

Organic chemists - be careful what you wish for on this.  You may have to give up eating and drinking much of anything - but at least you won't have to then worry about all the other things you mention. 

On the bright side (from 40 year old data) in the pinnacle of research endeavors, there were only a handful of chemicals known to cause human cancer; I'm sure the number has increased with increased testing and knowledge and use.  On a hazard scale that handful rated from 3 or 4 to perhaps 50.  Cigarette smoke was 18,000 on the same scale.  The human body is amazing in its ability to resist harmful threats.  Not perfect but pretty good. 

I do agree with much of your post.  Good stuff.  Good questions.  Unfortunately, I think much of the problem is us.  We want things ever cheaper, every higher quality, every quicker, ever easier to prepare, ever greedy and ever "all about me". 

... M