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Some Apple Watch Bands Contain Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Per Lawsuit [Updated]
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The only reason Apple its safe cause reports of that being saved are widely used by the industry, who themselves produce and earn money making PFAS. Apple definitely knows those reports are false, just like a McDonald would claim the Big Mac is one the best food you could eat due to the veggies and protein it has.
Newsflash, I don't let furniture set against my bare skin for 22+ hours a day. Do you?
to all of you who disagree or think it is funny; educate yourself with some sources like this:
What are PFAS? Everything you need to know about the ‘forever chemicals’ surrounding us every day
Toxic chemicals have been found in everything from strawberries to waterproof clothing. Should we worry?
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You are incorrect; I read both. Your suggestion otherwise seems to carry with it the notion that I've somehow missed something in that exchange -- but you have not provided any indication as to what exactly I may have missed, nor have you stated why it is that you feel my comment and associated link fail to adequately relate to the conversation at hand.
I'm not particularly inclined to sit here and guess as to your intentions; would you care to clarify?
I mean… they served coffee in a paper cup at 190 degrees so you couldn’t taste that it was old coffee. McDonald’s had known and cataloged the danger of how hot this was and had seen over 700 prior injuries to this point that they had paid off. McDonald’s had a rep that testified the number of injuries and payouts they had to make over that decade was insignificant to the millions of cups of coffee they had served. Their quality assurance manager testified that the temperature it’s served at is not fit for consumption as trying to drink it immediately would result in the same third degree burns in your mouth. And McDonald’s also stated they did not provide any warning that they were serving their coffee a few mere degrees under boiling.
But yeah… same same. Same same but different… but still same.
No problem, happy to.
This was OP’s claim that I quoted:
“the idea that that McDonald’s coffee lawsuit was frivolous is corporate propaganda designed to make the company look better…
these companies will spend money and effort on PR to make themselves look like they’re not the bad guys”
My reiteration of OP’s quote: McDonalds was the source of the common idea held by the public that the coffee lawsuit was frivolous via propaganda (as opposed to the idea naturally coming from the public itself). Companies do this type of PR.
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My response quoted:
“Any proof of this accusation or is this just a theory? (Guilt of main issue aside)“
Reiteration of my quote:
The actual hot coffee issue aside, do you have proof of this claim (that the common idea held by many in the public that the lawsuit was frivolous came from McDonald’s propaganda and not naturally from the public itself)?
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Your response quoted:
“The reports on the topic state that the coffee was far too close to boiling temperatures -- which is by no means a safe temperature to drink, let alone spill on yourself. Additionally, this was not the first such reported incident... just the worst of those incidents, resulting in thousands of dollars in medical bills for the old woman who spilled her coffee.”
My reiteration of your response (correct me if I’m wrong):
McDonald’s was guilty of the hot coffee issue, here is my source.
Again correct me if I’m wrong, but your response was not related to the claim about propaganda and its effect. That was why I believed you either hadn’t read my post or the accusation that I quoted.
I don’t question the coffee lawsuit itself since that was already settled in court. It was the added accusation about propaganda and especially the gravity of it, that I wanted to know whether or not was verified. I’m a sticker for proof when it comes to claims made on public forums, even if made just in passing, because people often tend to throw their opinions and theories around as if they are established fact, and if they’re wrong, then that’s bad because some readers believe these statements at face value. And of course, the only way to know if they’re right or wrong is if they have some sort of proof. I still haven’t gotten a response from the OP, so until I do I can only assume this was their personal opinion, and I would hope others who don’t already know of proof one way or another would assume the same.
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Oh... that. For my previous post, I was assuming that "main issue" was a reference to the original allegations against Apple which started this thread. To be quite frank, I find it difficult to believe that anyone -- outside of a corporate shill -- would sincerely question the notion that large corporations routinely spend money (both internally and externally) to produce propaganda in support of their own interests.
I'm afraid this is going to take us a bit further astray from that original thread topic for a moment... but as you've directly voiced your skepticism of things that I believe most people merely take for granted, let's attempt to address it in a meaningful fashion.
In short: in this instance, what you classify as a mere "theory" I would call a reasonable assumption based upon verifiable facts.
Consider the following: on the McDonald's official corporate governance webpage, they state in part,
So, we know that they openly fund lobbying groups and the like that align with their corporate interests. Of course, they are required by law to disclose such contributions, so an explanatory note on their governance page of this fact is hardly surprising. This is of course, not a smoking gun, but rather just the first indicator.
On the OpenSecrets.org webpage, we can learn where some of that money actually goes. Therein, you can easily find their largest contributions -- but with very little digging, you can also discover a note about somewhere over 500 other unidentified groups which have been funded at various levels by McDonald's. What are all of those groups? We can't really know for certain, but we can at least rest assured that they all represent in some way the interests of McDonald's and/or that of their employees. Another indicator.
Further astride, we come to the simple question of the existence of groups which aim to purvey the relevant propaganda. For that, we would need to learn about "Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse" (CALA) groups. Some people claim -- as you seem to believe -- that these groups are driven entirely by the community. Further digging reveals that to be only a surface deep impression; these supposedly "grass roots" groups are extremely well funded by deep pockets. And linking CALA groups to the McDonald's lawsuit in-and-of-itself isn't hard; for years, they would routinely use that lawsuit as their favorite example of frivolous lawsuits. A third indicator.
That said, to directly answer your query: These indicators quite obviously do not conclusively prove the specific cause-and-effect of McDonald's funding CALA groups. (Quite to the point, if a talented accountant had chosen to obfuscate such information, it would likely be next to impossible to prove.)
However, I think we can all agree that McDonald's has clearly benefited from the success of those CALA groups in convincing the public to believe that the hot coffee lawsuit was frivolous. (Even decades later -- within this very thread -- there are still those who appear to be fully convinced of that.) Therefore, even in the absence of conclusive evidence, it is entirely reasonable to postulate that the McDonald's public relations department would have had more than enough incentive to focus their time and energy (and money) on assisting those groups to propagate that myth.
Now, I will (perhaps foolishly) attempt to re-rail the train, and relate this to the original thread topic: Regardless of whether or not these Apple Watch bands actually do contain chemicals which can leach into the skin and are harmful to the health of the wearer, we could still reasonably expect some similar behaviors from Apple. The class action lawsuit has been filed because someone believes the bands to be harmful, and they further appear to believe that Apple knows this. Even if the plaintiffs have all of the evidence they need to demonstrate that, I fully expect Apple to downplay (both in the courtroom and via PR to the public) any harm that could possibly come from their bands... both before and after the conclusion of the case. (Indeed, the update to the parent article states that they have already started doing so.) I also expect that Apple will settle out of court and issue a statement denying all allegations, but nonetheless promise to do better with their future products.
I expect this, not because I have a position one way or the other on Apple's culpability... but rather, simply because history has taught us that that's what large corporations do.
Just like McDonald's did.
Sometimes it’s not abundantly clear if there is harm by a substance to a person. An I expect Apple was aware of this. Over the course of time eggs were good, eggs were bad, etc. Apple may settle but they may settle because it’s not worth going farther, even if they believed the substances were harmless to humans.
Maybe some kind of fine woven material…Textile
That’s when mcdonalds used to walk around refilling the cups? I remember that vaguely.
The proper procedure as you describe was to brew it and then move the carafe to the warming plate for it to stabilize at the correct temperature. If you served it too hot, you could warn the customer of that. “We just brewed it, it’s hotter than normal, so be careful.”
Newsflash, calculate the amount of skin area that does contact your furniture times the amount of time you are sitting on it. Then do the same for your watch band and tell me which is the bigger number. By the way, I don’t wear my watch when I’m sleeping so only about 15-16 hours not the 22+ hours that you do.
Where can I sign up to be involved in the class action? Literally every type of Apple watch band causes rashes on my sensitive skin. Apparently it'll cut into Apple's profits too much to make bands out of non-plastic natural materials like cotton and wool.
California? Well, California thinks that everything causes cancer, so I wouldn't be too worried about the so-called "forever chemicals" yet.
Good find. The article it quotes is a research article which does show PFAs can be absorbed, however this is very variable (58.6% to negligible) even on saturation with a liquid version. It’s not clear how relevant this is to the Apple (or other) bands depending on the PFA they use or how stable they are when worn.This – a different article from The Guardian to the one in the post – also seems relevant here/in relation to your thoughts:
Toxic PFAS absorbed through skin at levels higher than previously thought
Absorption through skin could be ‘significant source of exposure’ to toxic forever chemicals, study showswww.theguardian.com