Environmental Question #37 [Chemical Conspiracies]

Do you think it's possible that lax public health standards are being used intentionally to hurt people with covert chemical warfare?

Courtesy of Reddit user u/M1ST3RJ1P

Q: Do you think it's possible that lax public health standards are being used intentionally to hurt people with covert chemical warfare? Maybe that's outside your scope but I'm interested to hear your opinion on the issue. I might just be paranoid but it seems like an easy thing to pull off given the nature of the military industrial complex. At the very least I feel like we are being experimented on with insufficiently tested chemicals. Am I just off my rocker?

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A: Ooh a fun question! I don't often get to share my personal opinion, instead of explaining scientific facts. Everything below is my personal opinion as a person who is a scientist with an amateur interest in public policy and politics, but who has no deep professional knowledge about government.

You may have heard a saying along the lines of, "Never assume malice from someone when incompetence is an option." That sums up my thoughts on this question. I've never worked in government, but I've worked for some of the biggest companies in the world, and hoooooo boy a lot of the people in charge are very stupid, very lazy, or both. My job is to remove hazardous chemicals that companies use and replace them with safer alternatives, while also keeping an eye out for any sources of pollution that might be involved in the manufacturing process. There have been so many times when I have found a company to be using horribly toxic chemicals or polluting in horrible ways, and expected to find a mustache-twirling villain behind it all, only to instead find a money obsessed idiot.

Companies and governments are often on strict deadlines with strict budgets, and they are too often willing to cut corners to meet those expectations. I can't tell you how many times I've had basically this exact conversation:

Boss: We need to launch this product as soon as possible, or our competitors will take a chunk out of our market share!

Me: I understand, I'll have it done soon. The product design is basically complete, I just need to finish reviewing the manufacturing process to make sure there are no potential sources of pollution or any unexpected chemical reactions that could make toxic byproducts.

Boss: Wait, you said the product design is done. Launch it right now, we need the sales for this quarter!

Me: I don't feel comfortable launching a product until I'm sure it's safe.

Boss: Launch it now or we'll have to talk about this in your performance review.

Personally, I don't see anyone in this interaction as malicious. My boss is definitely negligent and irresponsible, but he doesn't actually know whether the product is dangerous. Nobody knows if the product is dangerous, because I was never given the chance to test it and find out. He's not trying to poison people, he's trying to make as much money as possible, and he doesn't care one way or another if people get poisoned. I'm trying not to poison people, but there's only so much I can do, since I have no real power in the situation, and I need the job to pay my rent at the end of the month.

I have seen this interaction play out across the chemical industry with all different people in all different positions. I don't think there is a grand conspiracy to poison the population, I think there are just a whole lot of people who care more about money than they do about safety, so they cut corners until there's basically nothing left.

I haven't worked for the government, but I need to understand all the government chemical regulations to comply with them, and I can say from that perspective that the same is true for the government. The people making the laws and regulations usually don't have any real understanding of chemistry, so instead they rely on advice from scientists and businesses to understand the risks of various chemicals. The scientists advocate for safety only, and they don't care if their recommendations might destroy some businesses, and the business leaders advocate for business only, without any regard for safety. The regulators then need to find a reasonable balance. Personally I think regulators side with money over people's safety far too often, but that isn't a conspiracy, it's greed.

That said, as I'm sure you know, the US government has been responsible for some horrible experiments like the Tuskegee Airmen experiments and MK Ultra, but while those experiments were horrific, they were also small. Conducting an inhumane experiment on a few hundred people is very different from conducting one on a few hundred million people. I'm quite confident that the problems we face aren't a coordinated attack, they're just the result of a system filled with a lot of dumb, lazy, and greedy people.

(I hope you've found this all useful. The little scene I wrote out of me and my boss hit particularly close to home for me, because I recently resigned from my job following my employer attempting to cover up a major chemical spill in the factory. I'm currently unemployed, and it's a hard time to be a sustainability chemist in the US, so if you're feeling generous I would certainly appreciate a little help to make ends meet.)