Link borrowed from WShetterly

[cyrano]

Investigative journalist Mark Schapiro discusses why companies that manufacture hazard-free products for the European Union often produce toxin-filled versions of the same items for America and developing countries.

Of course, this is leftie radical AlterNet, and there may be a good solid reason that companies want to poison us. Perhaps it's in our best interest.

Comments

[denyse.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! And I have noticed that there's a bit of the 'until we have a study that shows overwhelmingly that exposure to something kills people and it couldn't possibly have come from any other confounding factor we're not going go conclude that it's dangerous' going around. There is a remarkable disparity between what the EU allows and what the US allows in many things.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

While I understand the theory behind "UWHASTSOTETSKPAICPHCFAOCFWNGTGCTID" and support some balance between the two poles, I suspect that corporate control of regulation and law mean that the US leans further to that pole than I feel at all safe or comfortable with.

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

While I generally agree with Schapiro's idea of action based on an expanding body of evidence, I'm suspicious of the broad brush he paints with and his timeline. He says the degradation has occurred in the last six years. Well, this is just a thinly disguised attack on the current administration. Corporate America has had Congress and the Executive in it's back pocket for much, much longer than that.

Also, the U.S. has been known to react in what Schapiro claims is a European fashion, only to discover later that the "science" it was basing policy on was totally groundless (junk science). The DTT ban comes immediately to mind.

Schapiro needs to paint a more detailed picture if he wants to win converts.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Oh definitely. He's looking to sell books.
And while he mentions that the Clinton administration 'didn't do as much as it could have' and talks about how the way that the government is set up lends itself to this sort of thing, he's pretty much just dumping this at the feet of G-Bu.