We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
And the thing is it's not necessary at all. It's just to make the paper easier to handle and to pad profits of the chemical/plastic industry.
What's even worse is during the height of covid (when it was acknowledged anyways) when people were using tons of hand sanitizer, alcohol aids absorption and transfer of that stuff into the body so if you worked retail and were sanitizing your hands with that stuff after touching a receipt you were upping your exposure.
It's like how many budget Chinese made electronics have lead in the power cables that you can get on your hands when plugging them in. Why? Because it saves a few pennies over the non-lead process for making them and the foreign capitalists demand the Chinese cheap out on that (max profit) and we have no regulations against it (Europe at least has RoHS which means they use the slightly more expensive modern process for rubberized coatings without lead exposure). China has production capacity of non-lead PVC, many products made in China use it, but many don't including probably that extension cable or power strip you bought which you'll use and touch potentially hundreds of times throughout its life.
There's something deeply funny about the west importing toxic goods when we would mine n produce things like asbestos to sell to other countries while they were banned at home
WHAT
Wtf, WTF THEY MADE LEADED PVC???????s?d?d?F/
I'm going to panic a little about this after I get some sleep
Do you have any more information?
Yeah the original process as I understand it involved lead. Some decades ago better processes came out that don't involve it but as I understand it you can save a trivial amount by using the old process so a not insignificant amount of Chinese factories that produce for the US/NA use PVC made in older Chinese factories with the older process because it makes them more competitive and their buyers don't give a shit and just pressure them on price to the point of pinching pennies. US could easily stop this with a law like RoHS but you know.
Mind you it's not a huge amount of lead in most cases but I'd prefer to wash my hands after handling most cables before picking up and eating some food. Certainly if I've spent an hour handling various cables of unknown character I'd thoroughly wash my hands with soap and water for 30 seconds and wipe them.
I mainly know this because I live in California and tons of these things have prop65 warnings about lead on them. Especially extension cords, cheap store brand power strips, etc. I've seen it with more expensive products as well such as some laptops for the power cable (down to manufacturer I think and maybe product line) though it's somewhat less likely as once you get into $150 for an air fryer or whatever it makes less sense to penny pinch to save 50 cents than on a $19 product (though if the company wants to be cheap about it they can and will I guess).
If you live in the EU because of RoHS there isn't any real risk there.
If you're buying products you can look for the RoHS certification and if they have that it means they don't use the old lead process. When I browse from a California IP address a number of online retailers note prop65 warnings (sometimes only in check-out) for products.
Unfortunately because power cables in particular are a segregated market with the EU, Aus, and most of the world having entirely different plug styles from the US it's practical for manufacturers to just make the US cables using the cheap leaded process while using the better process for all other markets.