Europe has been struggling with this madness for some time now.

The way these bans are worded is typically focused against retail purchases by individuals and small businesses. The bans also tend to be specific to end uses, in this case, solvents.

IIRC, the European ban was of OTC paint strippers, which really tripped people up on DCM because that was the primary source. Word was that the European parliament was infested with lobbyists from the companies holding patents on "green" chemicals, so this was another one of those things which might have been good but was done absolutely for the wrong reasons.

I have to wonder if this might be parallel in some respects. If it is just for paint solvents, then we're fine on the toluene. It will continue to remain available in plastic solvents and as a fuel additive. DCM should hopefully remain available also as a plastic solvent.

As far as the plastics go, the chemically boring eco-crap replacements won't cut it. If the law was written in a way only to target a mass-market use where a substitution is possible then all we have to worry about is some inconvenience.

Losing DCM would be killer, as would toluene (for those o-nitrating it).

I'm stocking up anyway.

OTC solvents nearly always require distillation at the least to purify them. Probably 70% of solvents i use are acquired OTC with the obvious exception of specialty solvents. I purify them myself, lots come with colored impurities or polymers.
Just because chemicals are obtained at a hardware store or similar, it does not mean they cannot be brought up to excellent purity with a little personal effort.
I don't want to be ordering gallons of methanol or acetone from a local lab supply or online...it becomes practical to use OTC sources very quickly.

"Personally I think corporate lobbying should be banned outright, or at least heavily regulated with a specific view to preventing vested interests from exerting influence, when Big Industry wants to influence the govt. its not likely to be good, they have a long history of squashing competition, and squashing smaller businesses by such means, and pushing agendas which we, the people, do not want."

Yup . Its criminal conspiracy and treason and a proof that we dont live in democracys . The pharma / chemistry industry has more to say about laws concerning their products than scientists and common sense .The fuckers test their own products and then only suply the government departments that are there to aprove or not chemicals for sale the results that are positive for them . Then when they get caught fuck all happens .Looking at the members of those aproval boards very often shows that the members either have strong links to the industry or that after they leave those jobs they go on to work for the chemical / pharma industry . The monsanto story is a very very good example of that .

"What the fuck is the point of that"

Could it be because of taxes ? I mean the same as the reason for colour in agriculteral petrol and not in petrol from petrol stations ?

I personally cannot be bothered with the hassle of cleaning polymeric gloop out of my equipment. Ick, that sort of stuff is often quite persistent, although I have never dealt with the particular varieties used for this purpose.

I really do wish the entire damnable pack of cretinous, oxygen-embezzling shitweasels that run the EU would for once, just piss off, and get their noses out of everybody else's troughs. As delightful for the ozone layer as halocarbons are, jackbooting on people's right to choose the consumer products they want is not going to solve shit.

Instead, how about trying to reduce car emissions (and not by banning cars!), and cracking down on big industry belching fumes out of huge smokestacks and the like, encouraging the use of TiO2-impregnated catalytic pollutant destroying bricks, and superglueing a cork up the arse of any politician found to be emitting too much hot air.

Sooner or later its going to get to the point when there I wake up to find some public 'servant' fleck of dog shit, who is totally unworthy of being permitted to live, in a non-job that should never have existed, wielding a tube of KY jelly and a rubber glove (made from biodegradable plant-protein biopolymer of course) demanding to stick their hand up my cadbury starfish, under the aegis of a national study on rectum length to try and correlate it to bowel cancer risk, and attending that, a mandatory daily diary to be submitted of all food consumed, how cooked when eaten and how quickly finished, under pain of fines or, in the case of persistent refusal 'offenders',   jail time.

Already happened for people who don't take their wheelie bins in fast enough for the council's liking.
Including disabled people who can't take them in and out themselves being singled out for such officious jobsworthery and bullying.

Its just a pity innocent civillians work at the postal system inbetween that selfserving, impudent nest of inbreeds, an anthrax letter and various pissed off people who don't appreciate said upstarts lording it over everybody else.

Let them ban scissors. That just means it would be nescessary to batter any burgling dickhead to death's door with his own ripped off arms.

You don't think it possible to jackboot on everything useful or pleasurable outside of a dictatorship? it isn't. Whats your point, exactly?

Huxley? not familiar, but Orwell? gah, big dumb bunch of fuckholes took '1984' not as a cautionary tale, but as their bible, talmud, koran and used tampon all rolled into one ugly package. So have the US...only good thing is, if thats what it can be called, is that our government is as incompetent at jackbooting as they are at everything else save for filling their pockets at other people's expense and ejaculating over the EU's Big Book of Rules (with accompanying 800-page 'leaflet' on how to masturbate over the EU rulebook, when one may do so, what clothing must be worn around one's ankles while doing so, what auditory frequency ranges may be used to broadcast localised, volume-restricted groaning, and what words may be groaned at what time, in, and out of the presence of those under 12, 16, 18, and 21*)

*for all enquiries relating to permissible carbon emissions please refer to the binding treaties on carbon emissions, rules applicable in the member(waving) states, for those related to the new EU masturbation tax and the over-inflationary hikes therein please take your cock out of angela merkel's mouth so the dumb, ugly nazi slagchops can answer (oh, and if you have any, remote shred of decency, shag some little children instead next time, sheesh, even that is better taste than what you just did. Sieg Heil!

Oh and as far as rigging up a sodding great still and distilling several gallons of nitro-mors at a time, Tsathoggua would far sooner send a few euros the way of a certain polish entrepeneur and go to no more hard work than cutting open a box:D

I think your right about the reasons behind such petty zealotry, bugger all about the purported cause 90% of the time, more about giving the finger they already have up the average citizen's rectum a bit of a wiggle around inside. An excersise in unbridled faggotry, and lording it over the common pleb more than ever hoping to achieve anything other than reinforcing how easily they can piss people off.

Sooner or later, I am sure, somebody is going to take it seriously the wrong way, preferably somebody who knows a bit about the chemistry of lewisite and the mustard agents, and who has absolutely no compunction against butchering pen-pushers. I hope I am around on that day, so I can dance in time to the screaming.

In antibodies neck of the woods, they have added a new tax on VOCs. It shows up on the receipt as a disposal fee. Presumably this is the anticipated cost of dealing with it when it arrives at the hazardous waste dump. I was tempted to tell the cashier that I recycle my solvents, but decided against it in the end