Quote Originally Posted by trainwrecked View Post
I can't understand why there seems to be such a disconnect between the science and the regulations.
Obviously, you haven't had much close-at-hand experience with government regulations, before.

Back when I serviced 20+ large (100,000+ gal) pools each summer, and hauled 300 gallon tanks of bleach around, I encountered a situation where I could choose to violate EPA regulations, OR, I could violated DOT regulations. But, the only way to avoid violating one or the other, was to stay home!

Currently, in Tennessee, certain classes of large pools are required -- by enforced health code -- to post "No Lifeguard on Duty" signs on, or near, their lifeguard stands.

And, for a truly massive example consider our current "global warming" discussion. I'm old enough to remember things that happened before a lot of folks here were born, so this time line won't be familiar to many, but here's a rough outline:

1970's -- global cooling, caused by nuclear testing, was going to kill us all. (Even some teenagers have seen movies from the 1990's and 2000's that exploited this trope.)
1980's -- the 'discovery' of the mathematics of 'chaos' reveals that weather is a 'chaotic' and therefore intrinsically unpredictable phenomena. The popularized phrase, "the butterfly effect" referred to the idea that a butterfly landing in China could cause a drought in the USA. (Again, this showed up in movies; one with Ashton Kutcher mixed time travel with the "butterfly effect".)
1990's -- after a decade of disinterest in global cooling, global warming was 'discovered', and we were 'educated' in the fact that we'd soon be underwater. (Movies, again!)
2000's -- some of the actual SCIENCE of global warming began to leak out, revealing that the data was far from monolithic, and that -- in fact -- global warming appears to have ended in 1997, or there abouts. Simultaneously, we were told in the media that,
  • when it got hot, it was global warming, AND
  • when it got dry, it was global warming, AND
  • when it got windy, it was global warming. BUT
  • when it was cold, it was global warming, AND
  • when it was wet, it was global warming, TOO.
My personal observation is that public policy and regulations are more often driven by academic fads than by hard science, but that those policies usually lag a decade or more behind the fads, so that by the time a regulation is in place, it's often already academically unfashionable.

There are many, many areas of regulation and policy where the disconnect between the facts and the policy is much worse than is the case with pools!