7 How the Law Promotes Ignorance: The Case of Industrial Chemicals and Their Risks

Suppose about the mid-1970s there had been one or more stories, horrible to read, describing how a few infants had been burned badly or burned to death as a result of fires that began near where they were sleeping. As the president of a chemical company, however, suppose you had an idea that bromine compounds when added to a small flame would lower it or slow its progress before it became larger and uncontrollable. Perhaps you could create an industrial chemical that could be put into furniture, couches, car seats, foam, cribs, and electronic equipment built out of plastics (oil-based products) so that if they caught on fire, the flames would be reduced in their early stages. As a society we have developed numerous oil-based products, but they tend to burn readily, at least at higher temperatures, and thus some believe there is a need to combat their combustibility with other, flame-reducing products. Even better, suppose you owned the rights to an abundant supply of bromine so that this natural resource would be a comparatively inexpensive raw material with which to create a flame retardant. Now all you would need would be a chemical creation to add to commercial products to reduce flames should they catch on fire. You could render a public service, saving small children and some adults from horrible deaths, and make a profit at the same time.