But the precise identity of these substances
is often unknown to researchers and printer
users because the printer manufacturers don’t
disclose this information.
That's not entirely honest. That statement conflates the idea that there is no information available to end users, detailing how 3D printing technology works, when the truth is that the information is out there, and most of the materials involved in consumer-grade plastic 3D printing kind of HAVE TO BE well-understood from a chemical perspective in order for the printers to be designed around them.
FormLabs does publish material safety data sheets:
But, realistically speaking, just based on the fact that it's possible to cobble together open-source 3D printers from commodity parts and commodity expendable plastic, should inform the reader that the materials used by 3D printers are not so mysterious. In most cases the materials are acrylic/styrene based polymers, and not so exotic that they haven't been used for decades. Whether they've EVER been safe is another question altogether.
The article neglects and glosses over these details.
The devil is mostly in the details, and enough pigment is in the PLA to somewhat alter printing characteristics. I believe different color PLA has different smells but that is right on (or past) the detection border.
Raw "natural" uncolored PLA is probably about as toxic as a corn cob or piece of wood, in other words it can probably mess up some embryos but its not a serious problem. Its polymerized lactic acid, not exactly biochemically exotic, we're not talking about organometallics here or arsenic chemistry or something exotic like that. It "should" be very biochemically boring.
On the other hand there is a VERY long history of pigments in general being toxic. Add in legendary Chinese safety standards and I would not be surprised if there is a problem with chromium-VI tinted orange PLA. Or white lead pigment in white PLA. Oh I'm sure the press releases will say its all lead free and gluten free and organic free range plastic, but on the other hand I'm sure we all know strange things get shipped and they're not using FDA approved food dye for everything over there.
I was very displeased with the tone of the article claiming ABS (which stinks) and PLA (which is nearly odorless) are very superficially both dangerous and only later in the article do I read that PLA's effect was barely statistically measurable although the other plastic is a highly effective mass murderer. Oh just a slight bias in the article until it comes time to report results, just a tiny little bit of bias. Perhaps they patented that too.
The article neglects and glosses over whether the "melted plastic" objects were ABS or PLA (or something else), which quite readily indicates the useful content in the article. (I suspect the research clearly defined that, but the article comes across as "I need to reach my word limit for the next 20 minutes, so I'll just copy-paste a few scary sounding sentences from a research paper, then make up some filler to go between without bothering to understand anything.")
'The drive, a 7,200RPM Deskstar 75GB drive, was released on 15 March last year [2000]. At the time, the press release announced excitedly that the drive was "the first IBM drive to use glass disk platters instead of aluminium ... allowing the recording head to read smaller bits of information that are packed more closely together. In addition, glass disks are more stable at higher speeds".'
But, of course, no one questions the possibility of, like, you know, not letting kids use cell phones in school. Or maybe not letting kids use any form of digital camera, at all, ever? Is that actually impossible? Or just unreasonable?
Or, like, what if the reality is that taking a picture of your own nude body is not actually a crime? What if images of human nudity simply weren't criminalized?
> But, of course, no one questions the possibility of, like, you know, not letting kids use cell phones in school.
That probably wouldn't have helped. I doubt they were taking the pictures at school.
> Or maybe not letting kids use any form of digital camera, at all, ever? Is that actually impossible?
At this point, probably. You certainly would destroy your child's social life.
The bigger problem is parents not knowing what the hell their kids are doing. This is rather simple: "Yes, I'm going to have all of your passwords and occasionally I'm randomly going to take your phone to check every single app on your phone and computer. And you will unlock them, or you are grounded and won't have a phone. Ever. No, you don't get a choice in this. If you don't want me seeing it you probably shouldn't be doing it."
Okay, but what about washing dishes, and waiting in line at the grocery store, and taking out the garbage, and cleaning the refrigerator, and wasting food when you accidentally burn dinner, and when the recipe is bad, and when you botch the ingredients. And so on, and so on, and so on.
...not to mention that in most cases, Johnny doesn't even really know what encryption is, let alone believe he's capable of it.
Try asking someone to encrypt something, anything before sending it. The looks you'll get range from sideways or merely confused to fearful and panicked, to are you fucking kidding me?
The common definition of a duel is: FIGHT TO THE DEATH. Typically with weapons, not limited to pistols, and pre-dating pistols, swords were used.
And the above cited law states that it's illegal to CHALLENGE someone to a duel OR ACCEPT SUCH CHALLENGES. Probably because it's interchangable with threatening to murder someone. Note that the provided law doesn't mention the actual fighting OF a duel.
Doesn't have to be that extreme in many cases it can be just a concussion which leads to intracranial swelling you feel "fine" till you go to bed and never wake up, other common side effects of getting repeatably punched in the face also include things like an increase likelihood of having a stroke due to blood cloths forming within cranial blood vessels (Circle of Willis, Cerebral and Lenticulostriate Arteries).
Killing a man with your fists isn't that hard, much training in various full contact martial arts actually goes into practicing how not to kill your opponent during a fight.
The funny thing about depictions of ISIS' areas of operation and control on maps provided by, say... The New York Times, is that they're always shown as wispy red tendrils curling along main highways and around towns, and that level of spin is a bit silly.
The point being that there's some sort of psychological effort being made, to assert that while all the main roads are under control, and all the main roads certainly surround much larger areas, ISIS only controls the first 25 feet outside of the roadway, as if it's bound by some sort of municipal Iraqi or Syrian zoning ordinance.
ISIS doesn't have an Air Force; they can't really defend the desert they don't occupy event if it's terrorist with little strategic importance.
Had the maps shown ISIS with more territory someone might suggest a psychoigical effort was being made to scare people into supporting a more direct conflict with ISIS.
I do think it would be interesting to know how journalists draw these maps though.
Angry!