while I am convinced now that this is hands down the safest waterproof glue available, I do wish that there were better.

Sadly apart from oak, glass and ceramics, it is hard to find a material this is really safe for large levels of exposure. Some of the prettiest glass and ceramics out there is also fairly suspect. Stainless steel may even have issues.

My suspicion would be that if we had a serious drive to make some safe plastic formula, and tested them independently and widely, we might find several reasonably safe recipes. Then if we used all of the reasonably safe recipes and stainless, glass and whatever, that we could avoid over exposure to a single toxin.

While the data on BPA is very frightening, the data on all of the other adhesives that I have seen people use for cutting boards and even drinking vessels is far worse. My own plan would be to avoid it where possible and reduce it otherwise. what really scares me is the possibility that in our rush to avoid BPA, we are likely to go to something worse.

High Fructose Corn Syrup was the answer to the over use of cane sugar. Now it is looking like cane sugar would have been much safer. Some are looking at agave as a solution, however it is probably an even more dangerous sweetener.

It is also possible that the animal testing of BPA will not be matched on humans. The carcinogens in grilled meat, have turned out to be fairly benign on humans, despite the horrible effects on test animals. Apparently, being descended from folk that have been eating burnt meat for quite a few generations, has given us a nice resistance to the horrible chemicals created by burning meat.

The potential long term effects of an apparently cumulative poison like BPA are pretty scary. But from my looking at the chemistry of some of the bottles that are being claimed to be safer, I wonder seriously if that is true. Truth is, we probably need to go back to using glass for sealing foods. But then, what are we going to use to seal the glass. I am no so sure the rubber seals are that great. I did not mind the little waxed paper seal on milk bottles that we had when I was a child. Maybe that is the way to go.

These days it is hard to say that anything is safe. Every year, near the end of summer, all of my bees die. I have no idea who it is upwind that sprays the toxins that take out my bees. I figured it was a cotton farmer or someone treating pasture for fire ants every year. As residences have been springing up all around me, there are now more and more people that are unaware that the area they live in is regularly being dosed with toxins.

So while do think there is great virtue in people using this epoxy over other adhesives, I wish we had a few more options available. One of the very real problems about wanting something to be safe, is that the testing is quite expensive and is fairly high risk. You put a lot of money into proving that your invention is no good. This is the sort of research that the private sector is really not good at.

Sadly, since our current political and scientific climate do not encourage pure research without connections to industry, other countries are likely to have a serious head start on us. It is even possible that wealthy chemical industries might seriously want to squash such research as it might impact their bottom line. At one time we were highly regulated in our food and drug industries. As a result the world considered our goods to be the gold standard. This was very good for our industries and political relations. Since then our standards have fallen quite a bit, and we no longer have the high ground on food quality or on medical integrity.

The worst part of all of this, is that if the animal tests on BPA are a good indicator of the effects that this chemical has on humans, then it might well engender a society that is less likely to chose to correct such problems.

Bob

Bob

Thanks
John Marino

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