In New Headache, WeWork Says It Found Cancer-Causing Chemical in Its Phone Booths (reuters.com) 72
Cash-strapped WeWork, the office-sharing company that is trying to negotiate a financial lifeline, has a new problem that may prove costly. From a report: It has closed about 2,300 phone booths at some of its 223 sites in the United States and Canada after it says it discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde. The company, which abandoned plans for an initial public offering last month after investors questioned its mounting losses and the way it was being run, said in an email to its tenants on Monday that the chemical could pose a cancer-risk if there is long-term exposure.
After a tenant complained of odor and eye irritation, WeWork began testing and based on the results took 1,600 phone booths out of service, the company said in the email to tenants, which it calls members. An additional 700 booths are closed while more testing is conducted, it said. All the phone booths closed were installed over the past several months, WeWork said. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine quips: "I don't understand what is happening here. Did WeWork founder Adam Neumann disturb a mummy and trigger an ancient curse? Was a WeWork built on a haunted graveyard, unleashing powerful dark energies and also elevated levels of formaldehyde? How do you have such a relentless parade of negative financial news and then find out that your phone booths cause cancer? 'Our phone booths might cause cancer' was not an IPO risk factor. Nobody had 'phone booths cause cancer' on their WeWork Disaster Bingo cards."
After a tenant complained of odor and eye irritation, WeWork began testing and based on the results took 1,600 phone booths out of service, the company said in the email to tenants, which it calls members. An additional 700 booths are closed while more testing is conducted, it said. All the phone booths closed were installed over the past several months, WeWork said. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine quips: "I don't understand what is happening here. Did WeWork founder Adam Neumann disturb a mummy and trigger an ancient curse? Was a WeWork built on a haunted graveyard, unleashing powerful dark energies and also elevated levels of formaldehyde? How do you have such a relentless parade of negative financial news and then find out that your phone booths cause cancer? 'Our phone booths might cause cancer' was not an IPO risk factor. Nobody had 'phone booths cause cancer' on their WeWork Disaster Bingo cards."
glue fumes (Score:3)
Just air the goddammed booths out, let the glue dry, and stop the hysterics.
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This is probably just glue outgassing, no worse than new-car-smell or new carpet being laid down. Think about that before shouting "cancer risk"!
I do think about that, every time I get into a new car. They're fucking toxic. Actually, I think about that when I get into old cars, too, especially German ones. Each brand has its own distinctive smell... even when decades old. You can call me superstitious if you want to, but that concerns me. An old Ford just smells like whatever you've stunk it up with. An old Audi smells like an Audi.
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An old Audi smells like an Audi.
My 8 year old BMW still smells like leather. Or it might just be the leather cleaner and conditioner but I like it anyway.
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Yeah? Well, the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba had "Corinthian leather"! *And* Ricardo Montalban! Hah! :D
https://youtu.be/KgZLdhWjTSI [youtu.be]
Strat
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Wow. How did you know it is "glue fumes"? Brilliant.
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Anyone that's ever been near a new car or a big pile of plywood knows the smell. It off-gasses from all sorts of adhesives.
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Sounds like they need (Score:2)
FEMA trailers (Score:1)
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Remember all the FEMA trailers for Katrina victims, same mistake
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2316... [nbcnews.com]
At least the FEMA coffins didn't have that problem.
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Of course not. FEMA coffins are not made from particle board. They use only the best Amazon grown hardwoods.
Want to see something curious? Check Prop 65 (Score:3, Funny)
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Here in California, Prop 65 forces all those fun "everything in this store/building/business will give you cancer" notices. On the list includes such known mass killers as toast and prune juice. I kid you not. It's WAY overboard...
You beat me to it. Is this a chemical known by California to cause cancer or by the rational world? Tell me more about this list, does it include the deadly DHMO?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm guessing so if it contains particle board adhesives off-gassing formaldehyde or other VOCCs. All cheap furniture bears this warning. But the only person to see the warning might be the person constructing / unboxing the phone booth or reading an instruction manual.
Same issue with linoleum floors. I remember a few years ago hearing that some cheap linoleum fake wood floor panels were being tested and determined to be off-gassing higher than safely allowable levels of formaldehyde.
Glad I don't live th
You are known to the of California to cause cancer (Score:3)
Humans produce about 1.5 ounces of formaldehyde a day as a normal part of our metabolism. For that reason, YOU arw known to the state of California to cause cancer.
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Re:You are known to the of California to cause can (Score:4, Interesting)
Raymorris was clearly making a fun poke at the insanity of "OMG Formaldehyde is toxic if present!" without people realizing they actually produce the stuff inside themselves. ANYTHING, in a high enough concentration, is deadly (including oxygen and water). But modern society has gotten to the point that ANY amount of it is considered poison and means death. Your answer completely ignored his poke - and went to the "but it is harmful", without realizing he was literally mocking your position - before you even posted.
In chemical cleanup, there's a saying: "dilution is the solution". Concentration matters - and that was Ray's entire point. WOOSH - you missed it. Perhaps Ray (and we people who've been in Lynnwood, WA - although I am a resident of Ventura, CA now) is a bit too highbrow for you... You're not from Puyallup, are you? That would explain volumes...
Why can't Californians know that? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would suggest that it might be good for Californians to know when they are exposured to dangerous levels of formaldehyde.
Prop 65 adds substances to the list of any of several things is true. One criteria which requires that it be added is if it is on a federal department of labor list for employers which lists:
"based on at least one study conducted in accordance with established scientific principles that acute or chronic health effects may occur in exposed employees".
Inhaling wood dust in your work every day can give you a heck of a cough. That's "health effects may occur in exposed employees", so wood dust is on the federal labor department list.
Because it's on the labor department list (health effects on employees), that puts in on the prop 65 list. Therefore any wooden furniture, which could have some residual sawdust, gets this label in California:
"WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer"
That's just patently false. There is no indication that sawdust causes cancer - inhaling a bunch of it causes a cough. And sitting on wooden furniture causes - nothing. Prop 65 is LYING to California consumers.
Another criteria is if IARC lists it as a substance needing further study, that also gets it automatically added to the list. Again "known to cause cancer" is simply a lie.
Prop 65 doesn't require dangerous levels of the substance. You contain some formaldehyde, therefore you are "known to the State of California to cause cancer".
It's unfortunate that California law doesn't allow consumers to tell the difference between a wooden chair (not at all dangerous) and a booth full of formaldehyde gas (definitely dangerous). California requires both to be labeled the same way, "known to cause cancer". Riding a roller coaster? Also "known to the state of California to cause cancer" and because if you ground the steel track into a fine dust an inhaled it, that would be bad. Since the warnng is simply not true in the vast majority of cases, any Californian with a functioning brain has learned to ignore it. Which is too bad. Because a formaldehyde-filled chamber really should have an effective warning.
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Hey, an idea to keep the orange guy out of CA for fundraising. I'm sure his face cream and hair would fail several chem tests.
Average Californian $71,470 in the hole (Score:2)
The average Californian is $71,470 in debt, so probably not the best place to raise funds anyway.
On the other hand, Californians like to hand people hundreds of millions of dollars for not making solar panels, so maybe it's a good place to find suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H funding.
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The average Californian is $71,470 in debt
Yes, but our two bedroom townhouses are worth $1.2M.
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All things in balance, yes, a pure oxygen atmosphere is bad for you, that is not what you have evolved for, you need a balance of carbon dioxide, you evolutionary design uses it to trigger breathing, the greater the concentration in your lungs, the greater your desire to breath.
The sudden demise of WeWork, seemed to clearly align with one thing, new Privacy laws and more on the way. Major corporations, were making major investments, why, where was the profit, this stuff is old hat and is most profitable wh
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Voters voted it into law. New technology has allowed stronger detection. The law needs an update to reflect new technology, perhaps defining thresholds and/or a committee to determine thresholds per substance.
Changes are the cost of progress; nothing sinister or "commie-hippy" going on here; just old-fashioned democracy in action.
Getting such bills on the CA ballot is a known process. If you and enough care, you can do something about it.
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This appears to be a contradiction.
And yes, voters sometimes make bad decisions. Democracy doesn't mean perfection. It is run by humans, after all.
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They did this so that companies will be able to put real carcinogens in circulation and go un-noticed.
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All I’ve learned from prop 65 is that if I don’t want cancer, I should avoid traveling to California. I’m not sure if that was the lesson they were trying to teach.
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The fail with prop 65 isn't so much the things on the list. There is some fail in not taking the amount into consideration (especially where small amounts are naturally occurring and likely harmless). The fail is that there's a huge penalty for not posting the warning if it is required (even if you didn't know it was required), but no penalty at all for posting it where it isn't required. So the logical thing to do is wallpaper everything with prop 65 warnings just to be legally safe.
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I don't usually respond to ACs, but I want to make an exception to point out the insanity of the Prop 65 stuff.
Acrylamide is the concern with toast (which contains no more than 30 parts per billion [fda.gov] of acrylamide). The only relationship between cancer and acrylamide is in studies on rodents [cancer.gov], and they also acknowledge that rodents not only absorb acrylamide differently than humans, they metabolize it differently, too (also note that the cancer.gov link expressly states that the FDA does not regulate acrylami
Hire Zombies (Score:1)
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A guess (Score:4, Insightful)
I would bet that they sourced the laminate for the booths from cheap chinese suppliers and didn't do sufficient QC.
Similar to Lumber Liquidators
https://topclassactions.com/la... [topclassactions.com]
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Being that it is Telephone booth. I expect that it is just old construction methods. Plywood is a popular building material, because it is resistant to warping over time, it comes in large sheets, and is very strong for its thickness. However older plywood, used more toxic chemicals in its wood.
Simple explanation (Score:2)
In an effort to cut costs everywhere and make money, they decided to take the cheapest building materials and systems. A lot of building materials produced in China are using formaldehyde a lot more that can be off-gassing critical levels of formaldehyde for extended periods of time. Many contractors have warned not to purchase 'cheaper' materials for not just formaldehyde but also asbestos and other products.
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Here in Australia they put internal roof panels on a new Children's Hospital that were certified repeatedly in the supply chain as being Asbestos free. Delivery samples were taken and checked and found to be Asbestos Free.
Panels were put in - all good. A few months later some holes had to be cut in them for installations. Yes you guessed it they contained Asbestos. The Unions, Government et al not surprisingly threw their toys out of the pram. [Tertiary and Primary Healthcare here is provided by the State G
The curse of cost cutting (Score:2)
Nothing so dramatic. What he did was realize that his business was losing money on every rental, so they needed to cut corners wherever they could. That results in things like using a cheaper grade materials that happens to release carcinogenic fumes. Don't be surprised when all kinds of similar problems- substandard wiring, inadequate fire protection, etc.- start to crop up.
Phone booths? (Score:2)
What is the purpose of this? To cut down on workers having their own phones?
Do they share an incoming number and whoever is around answers the phone booth phone? I'm sure that comes off as very professional.
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Fair enough, so there is not an actual phone in the phone booth.
Sounds more like....a room with a door. That is the sort of pioneering technology worthy of an IPO.
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Friend of mine helped to setup a local/co-op coworking space. They wound up with a similar setup (Private space for taking phone calls) but amusingly they built it out of old phone books. (Appropriately strengthened to be earthquake safe).
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Wanna know what else causes cancer? (Score:2)
Nothing in life is risk-free. A statement that something causes cancer is worthless unless you also give the risk for the exposure level (e.g. "At the amounts found and typical exposures it would cause x additional cancer deaths per million people per year") so that we can compare it to other risks. The most dangerous thing most people do in their lives is get into a car. For most people that's t
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''(e.g. "At the amounts found and typical exposures it would cause x additional cancer deaths per million people per year") so that we can compare it to other risks.''
No you can't, unless you're comparing risk exposure of a 1974 Pinto with a manufacturing defect. Producing an environment that is toxic isn't something that can be enumerated by statistics. One death due to that type of production isn't acceptable. The majority of the risk involved in travel is due to physics, not manufacturing defect
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The risk is greater than zero and they investigated the issue due to health impacts experienced by their customers.
Why wouldn't they explore the extent of the risk, its impact and the options for mitigating or removing it?
Owning up... (Score:1)
sounds about right (Score:2)
pay a company to use their facilities that include particle board boxes called "phone booths". hmmm.
We all have elevated levels of formaldehyde (Score:2)
Formaldehyde is a byproduct when you metabolize methanol. If you drink beverages that have small amounts of methanol (for example, apple juice or distilled spirits) you'll have a trace amounts of formaldehyde in your system. It's normal to have exposure to carcinogens, it's a risk factor and not a certainty. How much and how often is the key concern.
People still use phone booths? (Score:1)
Lemme guess... (Score:2)
Those booths were made in the same Chinese factory that all of that corrosive drywall was manufactured,