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ARTICLE · 03 MARCH 2021

Cost-Benefit Analysis Is Very Complicated — And Very Important

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It's only a slight rhetorical exaggeration to say that the limited bandwidth left to environmental issues other than climate change in recent years has been largely occupied by concerns about PFAS...

United StatesEnvironment
Seth Jaffe
Seth Jaffe
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It's only a slight rhetorical exaggeration to say that the limited bandwidth left to environmental issues other than climate change in recent years has been largely occupied by concerns about PFAS - Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as "Forever chemicals."  A fascinating story in Bloomberg Environment & Energy (subscription required) this week suggests that we may need a little more bandwidth for PFAS.

The Bloomberg story explained that fluoropolymers are integral to the rollout of 5G networks and are also critical to a number of advanced technologies, some of which may matter much more to society than just the ability to download movies very quickly.  For example, fluoropolymers are used in automatic crash prevention technologies in automobiles.  They are also critical in implantable medical devices. 

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