Oh, certainly it will have been thoroughly tested. But things that we thought were thoroughly tested have been known to cause problems before. And people are already afraid of chemicals. Take a panicked population looking desperately for an explanation, throw in a coincidence suggesting the chemical may be at fault, and you have a “the chemical did it” mass hysteria at hands. (Yes, the actual medical community will be less likely to buy that, but it will take a while before they can convince the general public that the public is mistaken.)
Yes, but are you aware of any newly developed chemicals which are introduced into the human body being released worldwide in a short time frame? Within a decade, for instance? I don’t know of any. Different countries have widely differing standards of approval, and just because something rapidly passes into common use in one country doesn’t mean it will ever be authorized in another.
The best mechanism I can think of at the moment that might justify this would be if the chemical was never intended to be released at all, and a process that was not adequately tested turned out to be releasing low levels of chemical emissions which were not easily degraded and accumulated in the environment over time.
Oh, certainly it will have been thoroughly tested. But things that we thought were thoroughly tested have been known to cause problems before. And people are already afraid of chemicals. Take a panicked population looking desperately for an explanation, throw in a coincidence suggesting the chemical may be at fault, and you have a “the chemical did it” mass hysteria at hands. (Yes, the actual medical community will be less likely to buy that, but it will take a while before they can convince the general public that the public is mistaken.)
Yes, but are you aware of any newly developed chemicals which are introduced into the human body being released worldwide in a short time frame? Within a decade, for instance? I don’t know of any. Different countries have widely differing standards of approval, and just because something rapidly passes into common use in one country doesn’t mean it will ever be authorized in another.
The best mechanism I can think of at the moment that might justify this would be if the chemical was never intended to be released at all, and a process that was not adequately tested turned out to be releasing low levels of chemical emissions which were not easily degraded and accumulated in the environment over time.