As lawmakers around the world weigh bans of 'forever chemicals,” many manufacturers are pushing back, saying there often is no substitute.
As lawmakers around the world weigh bans of 'forever chemicals,” many manufacturers are pushing back, saying there often is no substitute.
Yet I guarantee you that in their R&D labs they’re already looking for alternatives at this point, all the while claiming to the public that it will be impossible to replace or result in inferior products (maybe it will, but hopefully it won’t be super noticeable - leaded gasoline’s octane numbers haven’t been matched cheaply but we can still drive just fine).
Exactly what I thought as soon as i read the title: “These chemicals can’t be replaced” “But did you look for substitues?” “Well… no.”
All it took to find a replacement for CFCs was to ban and discontinue them.
Remember your high school chemistry class? What do you think they are going to use instead of fluorine? The thing that makes these compounds useful is exactly the thing that makes them “forever.”
Yes I do. I also remember my college chemistry classes. And my work in an industry R&D lab evaluating potential replacements for a fluorinated compound.
Something that’s not as good, but good enough. See leaded vs unleaded gasoline for a historical example of industry reacting to regulation. It’ll of course take time and money, and there may be limited use cases where there aren’t any conceivable replacements, but in a lot of cases these compounds are used as a catch-all because they work so well.
Which one would be your first choice?
PFAS are used in so many forms (solvents, polymers, etc.) that I think the replacement will be very dependent on the specific use case (and potentially other regulations on alternatives, particularly for solvents). I’m not knowledgeable about every field these compounds are used in and for privacy/NDA purposes I can’t talk about the specifics of the ones I worked with.
You are certainly much more knowledgeable about this than I.
In broad general terms:
Doesn’t the fluorine make them both effective and forever? Isn’t it difficult to create a lower energy state molecule than a compound of fluorine.
Is “forever” the problem?
The points you have brought up seem to be an issue with responsibile manufacturing more than the nature of the chemicals themselves. Seems like that should be addressed on a much wider discussion than just these particular compounds.
For many applications, yes. Fluorinated compounds tend to be quite inert. There are definitely some applications where the compounds don’t need to be resistant to every type of chemical attack and you could use a more specialized compound that is generally less inert but performs similarly in whatever conditions you put it under.
Forever is a big part of the problem, but it’s worth noting that if a compound is completely nontoxic then bioaccumulation doesn’t matter as much (though some nontoxic chemicals can increase the potency of other, toxic chemicals and cause problems that way: see this article)
Yes. We need increased strictness on regulations and enforcement for these compounds and others because that’s the only way to make companies comply.
Nanomachines, son.
And big sheets of graphene and cold fusion and curing cancer.
It’s still nanomachines. How can you get sheets of graphene? Nanomachines. How do you solve cold fusion? Nanomachines. How do you cure cancer? Believe it or not, nanomachines.
“Just put the eggs in this pan and they flip themselves.”