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High levels of toxic chemicals found in paper receipts used by US retailers (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Holding the receipts for 10 seconds absorbs enough bisphenol S to break California’s safety rule

The findings are particularly concerning for cashiers and people working in retail who may handle many receipts throughout the day. The CEH also noted that people in restaurants often hold receipts for a long period of time while looking at a bill or waiting for service.

They will either have to switch to paper that does not include BPS or affix a warning to the products. That could potentially include a sign near a cash register that alerts consumers to the receipts’ toxicity.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

And the thing is it's not necessary at all. It's just to make the paper easier to handle and to pad profits of the chemical/plastic industry.

What's even worse is during the height of covid (when it was acknowledged anyways) when people were using tons of hand sanitizer, alcohol aids absorption and transfer of that stuff into the body so if you worked retail and were sanitizing your hands with that stuff after touching a receipt you were upping your exposure.

It's like how many budget Chinese made electronics have lead in the power cables that you can get on your hands when plugging them in. Why? Because it saves a few pennies over the non-lead process for making them and the foreign capitalists demand the Chinese cheap out on that (max profit) and we have no regulations against it (Europe at least has RoHS which means they use the slightly more expensive modern process for rubberized coatings without lead exposure). China has production capacity of non-lead PVC, many products made in China use it, but many don't including probably that extension cable or power strip you bought which you'll use and touch potentially hundreds of times throughout its life.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

There's something deeply funny about the west importing toxic goods when we would mine n produce things like asbestos to sell to other countries while they were banned at home

[+] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah the original process as I understand it involved lead. Some decades ago better processes came out that don't involve it but as I understand it you can save a trivial amount by using the old process so a not insignificant amount of Chinese factories that produce for the US/NA use PVC made in older Chinese factories with the older process because it makes them more competitive and their buyers don't give a shit and just pressure them on price to the point of pinching pennies. US could easily stop this with a law like RoHS but you know.

Mind you it's not a huge amount of lead in most cases but I'd prefer to wash my hands after handling most cables before picking up and eating some food. Certainly if I've spent an hour handling various cables of unknown character I'd thoroughly wash my hands with soap and water for 30 seconds and wipe them.

I mainly know this because I live in California and tons of these things have prop65 warnings about lead on them. Especially extension cords, cheap store brand power strips, etc. I've seen it with more expensive products as well such as some laptops for the power cable (down to manufacturer I think and maybe product line) though it's somewhat less likely as once you get into $150 for an air fryer or whatever it makes less sense to penny pinch to save 50 cents than on a $19 product (though if the company wants to be cheap about it they can and will I guess).

If you live in the EU because of RoHS there isn't any real risk there.

If you're buying products you can look for the RoHS certification and if they have that it means they don't use the old lead process. When I browse from a California IP address a number of online retailers note prop65 warnings (sometimes only in check-out) for products.

Unfortunately because power cables in particular are a segregated market with the EU, Aus, and most of the world having entirely different plug styles from the US it's practical for manufacturers to just make the US cables using the cheap leaded process while using the better process for all other markets.