Enviro agency may sue Apple following Greenpeace iPhone report - Page 2

Well, when your kids start wearing parts of iPhones for clothing let us know.

Greenpeace really annoys me and I'm green. The Al Gore kinda green where technology isn't evil green.

Well said, as to be honest I think this is all exaggerated.

What makes a product 'good' isn't how green it is, but many things - Apple shouldn't casted beside as being a good cellphone manufacturer just because traces of PVC and such can be found in their products - that's bullshit.

That's a big IF. Frankly, most of the things they cite are quite legal in most of the US and quite standards in products you buy everywhere.

The only thing that gives them a chance is the bizarre California law which says that it's illegal to sell ANY product with ANY amount of ANYTHING known to be a carcinogen. Sorry to point it out to these pinheads, but you can find insignificant traces of carcinogens in everything ever made. It's an inane law and I hope the Supreme Court gets around to striking it down some time.

Good point. Why is Greenpeace trying to deprive them of great phones?

Kasper? what about your Automated Slave?

Why anyone would switch from glass baby bottles to plastic still baffles the mind. Go into a Chem lab. You won't see their main mixing beakers made from plastic. They are all glass and for good reason.

Not true. There are quite a few lines of plastic labware. They can be more expensive than glassware. But, they aren't usually made of PVC, though the chemical tanks on most of my film processors were made of that.

Some of the materials in use for this are:

ECTFE, ETFE, FEP, FLPE, FLPP, HDPE, LDPE, NYL, PPCO, PC, PETG, PK, PFA, PMMA, PMP, PP, PS, PSF, PTFE, PUR, PVC, PVDF, TPE, XLPE

There are others, for more exotic uses, but these are the more common ones. They are from my Cole-Palmer (www.coleparmer.com) Lab catalog.

People here are confusing the "hard" PVs with the "soft" PVC's.

These are very different.

The soft PVC's like the ones used in car seats, coverings for wires, etc., have plasticisers that are given off. You can smell that in a new car. Those are considered to be dangerous. The hard PVC's don't use plasticisers that evaporate, but are given off, along with other dangerous compounds, when the plastic is heated a good deal, such as when being welded, or particularly when burned (very bad!). When I weld PVC, I wear an organic substance gas mask. That's required, though some don't do it.

double post

“Like all Apple products worldwide, iPhone complies with RoHS [Restriction of Hazardous Substances], the world’s toughest restrictions on toxic substances in electronics,” an Apple spokesperson, told Macworld. “As we have said, Apple will voluntarily eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs by the end of 2008.”

Well Apple has laid out a time frame to eliminate these chemicals. Two points that weaken GP complaints is they really don't make a great context to how bad Apple is in comparison to others. And its obvious they use Apple for press coverage.

Its fair enough to complain that you would like Apple to eliminate these toxic elements faster. I haven't seen anyone list where every other manufacturer is in this regard. Most everyone else are still using some type of toxic element that they plan to stop using at some point in the future.

The iPhone does not use cadmium or mercury - and small trace amounts of lead and chromium. This is progress that GP downplayed because it does not support their hyperbolic claims.

OK I take back one of my complaints GP does list which companies are the best or worst. But as you look at them closely the ranking seems uneven at best.

Probably what makes this difficult as each company is doing everything at different rates and time frames. Each company is executing various programs at different rates of effectiveness.

I bet there's more publicity (cheaper by probably an order of magnitude) in suing Apple than you could get if you took out advertisements in all the mainstream channels.

GP is a media whore of the worst stripe.

October 17th, 2007 at 9:54 am 3


GreenPeace has made themselves into a group of clowns. They have lost all credibilitywhat a shame. They need a change in leadershipjust like any other political organization that has been around for too long, they appear to have corrupted because a few powerful extremists are really running the show. The group seems to have totally forgotten what made them so awesomelike saving the whales. Someone should ask their leadership what happened to really telling the truth about things. Why arent they outraged about all the pollution coming out of China and the people dying there and the fallout from there coming here and poluting our air as well as our products. Why dont they do something important like addressing what is really poisening the world.

China sells lead based painted toys, and toothpaste laces with antifreeze. And "Green peace" is worried about the insides of a cell phone. Pathetic...... just pathetic......

Just an FYI the USA leads the world in putting dirt into the air and letting the fallout go over the rest of the world.

Other than that I agree with everything you said.

I know the US leads in *per-capita* of the major countries in polluting the air, but dirt? I don't think what the US puts dirt in the air unless it's a euphemism like saying we're putting lots of sh!t in the air.

I think China's beat the US in *total* air pollution, but I need to look that up to make sure I'm not misremembering.

Mel, you never fail to amaze. I didn't take chemistry (strangely enough, as I thought it was a required course), but it certainly is a fascinating subject.

You are correct. In fact, the polluted air produced in China that drifts our way actually affects the US's air quality!

Years ago, I was a member of Greenpeace. I dropped out because some of their tactics go overboard. They are an advocacy organization. I agree with their principles, but not always with how they do it.

But, they do put pressure where it needs to be put—if they can.

Greenpeace has absolutely NO influence within China, so they spend their energies where they will have an effect.

China will surpass us later this year. or early next, some think they already have, and while our output is almost at a standstill, theirs is roaring ahead.

This has zippo with the kind of plastics used in baby bottles. The concern was for bisphenol-A (BPA) leeching out of baby bootles under use. I note that BPA was not in the alphabet soup you listed. Nor is acytel tributyl citrate (ATBC)...the other plasticizer of potential concern in baby bottles.

Now there is disagreement if BPA actually leeches out of baby bottles under use and if BPA is really a carcinogen or impacts growth. But the scientific answer is "no at the limits of testing" and "once, but the result was not replicated desipte repeated tries".

ATBC is made from citric acid and is often present in citris fruit.


No one is confusing anything. The leeching of stuff from flexible plastic wraps in microwaves is a different issue. If this stuff bothers you, only reheat stuff in glass or ceramic containers.

Heck, can you even buy glass baby bottles anymore? I haven't noticed any and I made halfhearted attempt to get some when my wife (the chemist) objected to using the plastic bottles in the microwave. But I notice her doing the same thing when push comes to shove.

Vinea

You may have noticed that my post was in regard to labware, not baby bottles. Please don't confuse issues.


I'm familiar with the controversy, but it may be for nothing.


Yes, there is confusion, even though are saying there is not. I'm aware of this, but I'll bet that most others here are not. The issues of air temperature leeching is present with all soft PVC's (just smell them, particularly when they are new), and not considered to be a problem with the hard ones, as witnessed by the fact that PVC is allowed for potable water systems, but only particular soft PVC's (which are called vinyls) are allowed for the same purpose. That is, only some vinyls are allowed.


The number of accidents with glass baby bottles was an issue years ago. Bottles exploding when heated with milk inside (people don't listen about heating the milk, and THEN pouring it into the bottle), babies, and their caregivers dropping, and breaking bottles, with injuries to either, etc. Plastic was considered to be safer. Older testing methods didn't detect all emissions from the plastic, but can now do so.

Baby bottles today are often made of PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate), or PMP (Polymethylpentane). But, I'm not going to pretend I can vouch for every manufacturer.

PVC: Environmental health disaster
PVC is the worst plastic from an environmental health
perspective, posing major hazards in its manufacture, product
life and disposal.
Toxic Manufacturing Byproducts: Dioxin (the most
potent carcinogen known), ethylene dichloride and vinyl
chloride are unavoidably created in the production of PVC and
can cause severe health problems, including:
Cancer
Endocrine disruption
Endometriosis
Neurological damage
Birth defects & impaired child development
Reproductive and immune system damage2
In the US, PVC is manufactured predominantly near lowincome
communities in Texas and Louisiana. The toxic impact
of pollution from these factories on these communities has
made them a focus of the environmental justice movement.
Global impact: Dioxins impact doesnt stop there. As a
persistent bioaccumulative toxin (PBT), it does not breakdown
rapidly and travels around the globe, accumulating in fat tissue
and concentrating as it goes up the food chain. Dioxins from
Louisiana manufacturing plants migrate on the winds and
concentrate in Great Lakes fish. Dioxins are even found in
hazardous concentrations in the tissues of whales and polar
bears and in Inuit mothers breast milk3.
The dioxin exposure of the average American already poses a
calculated risk of cancer of greater than 1 in 1,000 - thousands
of times greater than the usual standard for acceptable risk.
Most poignantly, dioxins concentrate in breast milk to the point
that human infants now receive high doses, orders of
magnitude greater than those of the average adult4.

No, this has just about everything to do with baby bottles.



The concerns mentioned in the suit were about phthalates not any of mels other laundry list of alphabet soup chemicals. Phthalates are the softeners used in most flexible plastics including the PVC family. They are used in PVC baby bottles, just as they are in about any other type of flexible plastic - including the PVC that is on wiring insulation inside the iPhone. Problem with the suit is that the proposition 65 doesn't talk about phthalate regulation in PVC, it concerns itself with lead levels in PVC where PVC is directly mentioned.

Hmmm, suing over something legal to use in a baby bottle*. Which comes into extended contact with food, food that goes directly into the intestinal tract for absorption? Compared to a headphone cable that sits outside the body. I think we have a bit of a mis-application of reading ability by the plantiff's legal team.

* California just passed a law allowing phthalates in baby bottles and teething toys until 1 Jan 2009. Yes, those products are specifically called out in the legislation. New car smell phthalates will still be legal in CA. Do you think dashboards and floor mats will have more off-gassing than a set of iPhone headphone cables? And they are still legal.

What you are saying is very true. Of course, most responsible companies phase out these products as fast as they can after a regulation comes into effect, even though the date may be in the future. I think I already mentioned that.

I'm totally against allowing dangerous chemicals into the environment, except for very rare circumstances, where the ingredient is required in a few critical products, and then only if the leeching is at very low levels, and when the products will be replaced after a short interval.

We do have to be realistic.

But many uses are frivolous, such as the smell treatments for cars. This should be banned right away. Sometimes, I think that they don't realize that babies travel in cars.

But, my original post was merely in response to someone who claimed that labware was always glass, which is very much untrue.