Item — HN Reader

I hate this. I’m up to my eyeballs trying to keep my newborn away from all the toxic shit that’s in every part of his life, BP* in plastics, flame retardants in clothes and mattresses and rugs, heavy metals in baby food and now in herbs, micro plastics in food, radioactivity and mercury in farmland around coal fired power plants, etc etc etc.

The negative externalities on dangerous chemicals is so very high; what am I supposed to do, test my fucking pepper? The burden of safety is squarely on the consumer after it’s already too late to prevent. I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point it’s safe to assume he is ingesting poisons that affect child organ and brain development in everything.

11 comments

I hate it too. The one thing that does make me a bit optimistic is that firstly that for quite a few of the big issues, things are gradually getting better (leaded petrol having been phased out, PBDEs are on the way out, average quantities of things like phthalates and PFOA in people's blood I believe are dropping in most places). The shift away from fossil fuels could be another massive health improvement - studies on fine particulate matter in the last few years show that they might be far, far worse for our health than was thought, and phasing out especially diesel and petrol for transport, as well as coal power and switching homes from gas to electric appliances will make a huge difference.

But it's also comforting to me seeing what smokers do - if they can suck down that many toxins, time after time, day after day, and it still takes decades to kill them, then as a non-smoker (in a country where smoking is very well regulated so you don't get exposed to a lot of second hand smoke either), that does give me comfort in how robust the human body is!

I think a big problem is that we invent so many new chemicals each year where the long term consequences are unknown. [0] Sure when we notice that their downsides outweigh their upsides, they usually get regulated away. But by then they may already have caused a lot of damage and it could take many years before they are completely gone.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/science-falling-wo...

Obstetricians and paediatricians around the world noticed an increase in average birth weight recently. It was attributed to a combination of less pollution due to COVID lockdowns reducing traffic, and reduced stress levels because more people were working from home.

Where I live, the air seemed pretty clean before. During the height of the lockdowns it was something else. The air was so clear that you felt like you could just reach out and touch the city skyline across the harbour. It was unreal how big a difference less cars on the road made.

wow, completely missing the point. also babies and children aren't smokers so there's no equivalency.

childhood is naturally fastest growth period anything disrupting hormone balance because of these traumas can drasticaally affect the rest of the childs life. think making them a mouth breather from disrupting immune system triggering asthma or allergies. this all connected and most people don't realize how much they are hurting their kids indirectly or even directly

Lots of babies and children used to be big second hand smokers, get exposed to asbestos fibres if work was being done on their homes and schools, possibly get exposed to DDT spraying in certain areas, have lead paint and lead pipes in their homes, breathe in fumes from leaded petrol with higher sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions than today's cars.

The point is that a lot of things are finally heading in the right direction. For endocrine disruptors especially, more people and agencies now know and care about them in a way that they didn't even 10-15 years ago.

> also babies and children aren't smokers so there's no equivalency.

Well for sure, but I do remember the thick cloud of smoke that we had to go through... I'm not saying it's equivalent obviously, but still quite amazing that it didn't affect us more.

The kids have always been exposed to this stuff, it's unavoidable. Focus on the big wins and don't worry about the small stuff - law of diminishing returns. Eliminating ppb of lead isn't going to move the needle versus getting your kid immunized.

You'll drive yourself crazy otherwise.

Thanks. I generally agree but the definition ‘small stuff’ is in relation to how harmful it is. I cook a lot at home and I use a lot of spices — including the brands that tested high for heavy metals. Lead is not safe in any amount particularly for babies. The hard thing to know is what things I should and shouldn’t be paying attention to.

We lived in a house with lead for a few years. I had my kids tested every six months. I even made sure I understood which type of test they were conducting. My thought was that this is a long term problem; if levels start rising, then we would take immediate action. Kind of a pull vs. push model.

It worked, we never saw elevated lead levels. Way easier than worrying about every little thing and monitoring them at all times.

> We lived in a house with lead for a few years. I had my kids tested every six months.

> It worked, we never saw elevated lead levels.

How does testing them for lead levels result in them not inhaling or ingesting lead?

It doesn't. They meant that their plan to take action if the lead levels rose was a workable one, i.e. they were able to execute the plan. They also said that lead levels in their children never rose. The sentence might have been more clear with an 'and' after the comma, although it was clear enough in context (IMO) without it.

By the time lead is detectable it has done meaningful damage. Yes it’s better to prevent more at that point so don’t stop testing. But testing is a poor prevention mechanism. Lead also does damage below the threshold of detection.

I don't remember all the details now, but the test we were using was extremely sensitive. I believe it was detectable within 1/20 of maximum allowable levels in children.

Unless they were eating paint flakes you never were going to see elevated levels.

ISTR that lead dust from wear and tear can be an issue as well though obviously less of one unless you're sanding the paint.

I'd think painting over old leaded paint with modern lead free paint should help alleviate that concern. Unless you're sanding the old paint before applying a new coat.

You had your kids' blood drawn every six months?

> Lead is not safe in any amount particularly for babies.

One molecule is safe, 1000 too. There must be an amount small enough to not cause any detectable changes. And I expect this level to be higher than when most people start to worry and stress causes more harm than a tiny amount of lead present in food or environment.

Honestly, don't worry about this. We use plenty of spices and my kid's lead level was extremely low (undetectable if I remember right). They will test your kid at some point too. This, and other potential sources, are only a problem if the test shows there's a problem.

> This, and other potential sources, are only a problem if the test shows there's a problem.

While true, at that point it's a problem with no good solution.

It depends. That's only true if the levels are very high (they can chetalate but it doesn't necessarily improve IQ). I also should have clarified "other sources" to be other trace sources.

The level isn't going to be that high from spices and normal food sources (even the article says it's .1% of a child's lead exposure). Unless they're eating paint chips or around lead fumes from old cars or some other high lead source, the levels will be low. While no amount of lead is necessarily good, there are threshold levels before it truly becomes bad. It's present everywhere in trace amounts.

There's more. Here's a good resource on common household lead hazards: https://tamararubin.com/topics/. She tags her posts blog-style so it's easy to browse.

Here are the things that I found in my house:

- Dishes and cookware, especially vintage and fancy glazed shit. It's a fucking crime how many popular brands use heavily leaded glazes in their products. The vintage Lenox stoneware I got from my parents tested at 4000 ppm at the eating surface, where the glaze was chalking off into our food.

- Small metal toy charms and cheap kids' jewelry. Commonly made from pewter, and often swallowed by small kids and babies.

- Vinyl miniblinds. Up until the late 90's vinyl blinds were heavily leaded. The dust they shed as they degrade in the UV light from the window is a common route of childhood lead poisoning.

- Dirt around old houses. If a house with leaded paint was ever sanded or scraped, the soil around around it can contain shockingly high amounts of lead, which is easily tracked into the house.

These are just the ones that I encountered when my kids were little. Tamara's website has a bunch more. The good news is that the consumer landscape has vastly improved in the last decade, so most of these are easily avoidable once you're aware of them.

> ...what am I supposed to do, test my fucking pepper?

I think a large part of the USA keeps electing politicians whose philosophy seems to be absolutely that – you "get the choice" to test your pepper or not, and market forces will eventually drive out the bad pepper companies.

This can be backed up by the fact that one of the past administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency was a thinly veiled oil and gas lobbyist [1], and the other one was a former coal lobbyist who relaxed standards on mercury [2].

So, thinking through the options, a few suggestions that look at solving the problem from all sides possible:

- From the data available to you, avoid the spices that are more likely to have high levels of heavy metals – thyme and oregano in particular seem to have higher levels for some reason

- Raise awareness of this report to trigger the capitalism response. If the companies are embarrassed enough on social and regular media, they will be motivated to control their heavy metal levels when it has an effect on sales.

- Keep electing politicians that are less likely to roll back environmental regulation. This is going to take a long time to have a systemic effect though. Voting in local elections is especially important, people often ignore those.

- Maybe, test your pepper? Food heavy metal tests seem to be commercially available [3]. Groups of concerned parents could pool in for a test of common spices.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/22/scott-pr...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/health-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak...

[3] https://www.agqlabs.us.com/food/heavy-metals-food-testing/

Maybe add to the list some kind of long term campaign to have true multi party system (N > 2). Get rid of the first past the post etc. A separate green party is pretty universal in those.

It is probably hard to prove, but it would make sense that the calculated manipulation by commercial ”special interests” is harder and more expensive when it has to influence multiple parties (instead of 2).

I've been really high on the idea that the simplest (legally/politically viable) solution is to put a cap on the number of people a representative can represent. That's a lot more hands to grease for lobbyist and a lot more ears for constituents.

I think there was one rep per 25k people in 1776.

The large number doesn't matter because reps don't read, right, or debate details of the f*n bills. ALEC, and party lawyers do.

I know there's a lot to be said about $POLITICIANS and $POLICY generally, but somehow I don't think there's any big-oil type conspiracy to prevent the FDA from checking for heavy metals in spices, specifically. Did they check for them in the more regulation-on environment of the Clinton administration? The Obama administration? Might there be more nuance than "regulations on!" "regulations off!?"

If the FDA had a classification of "We'd Prefer You Thought This Was Safe", it would be a more accurate description for a lot of their approvals. They are ostensibly protecting consumers, but they also protect manufacturers by engendering [sometimes misplaced] confidence. It's reasonable to assume that corruption plays into this when it's sufficiently incentivized.

> ...somehow I don't think there's any big-oil type conspiracy to prevent the FDA from checking for heavy metals in spices, specifically

Of course there isn't, but that's also not an argument I think I made. I was indicating the more general trend towards de-regulation in the majority of the US, which likely affects all government agencies, including the FDA and the FCC (see, for example, the unchecked monopolies of most ISPs).

I think of it as a chilling effect by appointment. If you put the oil lobbyists in charge of environmental protection and a lawyer from Verizon in charge of the FCC, it seems to me that, for instance, increased FDA funding for anything, (including food safety) is not going to be the top priority of the Government.

Now, it's possible you're asserting that moves like putting oil and coal lobbyists in charge of environmental protection are somehow unique and do not indicate a general skepticism towards regulation.

I suppose there is no way to emphatically demonstrate that without waiting for a few decades, but would refer you to various surveys about political attitudes towards governmental regulation of companies.

Thyme and oregano are easy peasy to grow at home.

What I've tried to do while parenting is focus on relative risks and mitigate the worst ones.

For kids the major mortality risk is "unintentional injury" (https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses_images.html). This is further classifiable into categories that represent risks we can mitigate (https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/childinjury/index.html): car crashes, suffocation, drowning, poisoning, fire, falls.

This means you can dramatically improve top-line safety just by doing stuff like

* take fewer car trips and always carefully adjust the fit of carseats

* follow best practices for safe infant sleep (alone, on the back, in the crib)

* be careful around water, introduce swimming lessons as a layer of protection against drowning at ages 1+ (AAP recommendations changed recently on this as evidence changed)

* keep medicine and poisonous cleaning supplies out of reach or out of the house

* keep smoke detectors and fire extinguishers maintained; teach basic fire safety plus how and when to call 911; try to avoid cooking burns

* play on soft surfaces and keep an eye out for fall risks

But yeah, I really don't know which long-term effects of environmental exposure to toxins are the ones I should try the hardest to mitigate.

My current belief is that the best long-term thing we can do for the kids is ensure they don't start smoking. The second worst environmental toxin I think I see right now is added sugar; or more generally an unhealthy diet. My read of the data is that there's evidence that unhealthy diet practices (correlated with high dietary added sugar) could, in the long run, lead to an increased risk of obesity, which dramatically increases the long-term risks of top causes of mortality, like heart disease and cancer.

I don't really have a good sense for how "diet and exercise" stacks up against "avoid low levels of arsenic in the spices I'm feeding the kids" but my gut feeling is that it's like 10x-100x more important.

I did like the idea from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/parenting/home-flame-reta... that the best thing you can do is buy less stuff. If you're worried about exposure to environmental toxins then buy fewer, less diverse things (stuff you use and food you eat) and hope those are good ones.

Another long-term risk I've been particularly interested in mitigating is skin cancers from sun exposure -- I've been trying to be conscientious about putting sunscreen on the kids when the UV index is in the 6+ range and they're outdoors for 20+ min. This is a very long-term risk and it's sobering that it might not materialize while I'm around to see the results.

People who worry about chemicals do worry that some sunscreens might be worse than others (for example the folks at https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/executive-summary/ produced some attractive charts arguing that you should avoid oxybenzone and stick to zinc oxide). I'm not sure the data show that "choice of sunscreen" is the same order of magnitude as risky as "using or not using sunscreen". Still, if you want to limit your risk to extra potential toxins, it's easy enough to pick exactly one formula and stick to it -- so we've been buying only zinc oxide sunscreen for a while, figuring that it's the same thing that's in Desitin and the kids are getting plenty of it. Whether this was wise I don't know (haven't seen any medical recommendations updated to reflect the results of https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-study-after-two-hours...) but it's easy enough to buy less stuff, or buy fewer kinds of stuff, and that gives some peace of mind.

Overall though my hunch is that the "miscellaneous bad chemicals" stuff is long-tail risk versus "safe driving and healthy diet and exercise".

just want to applaud you for your care and effort in such a great well-rounded reply.

tbh the top comment peeved me instantly. "oh so now that one has kids, suddenly eyes open, the world is terrible and it is now time to care so much about righting its wrongs!"

I guess i'm just a childless person talking.

And my useless eye rolls are thankfully washed away by your level headed, comprehensive, action-based reply.

Thank you

I gave up on this when I caught my kid licking the bottom of his shoes . They survive.

Mine didn't even bother with the shoes, she just licked the pavement directly. She's in college now.

Best solution is to not having kids. This is if you think for the kids first. There is no reason to have kids that is for the benefit of the potential child.

But nobody likes that. People's selfish wish always comes first before the potential kid's benefit. So kids will have these toxins in their body in the end and any problem that comes with it.

Existence feels like a benefit over non-existence. But this is a philosophical problem rather than a measurement problem.

Nope. Overall, the ecosystem collapsing. So human non existence more beneficial. Lot of people that I met also disagree unless they are high on copium and doesn't think honestly.

I'm of the opinion that the suffering we do as a race isn't worth the creativity and pleasure. Plus if you don't exist, you don't know what you're missing out on.

Then kill yourself.

Otherwise, shut the fuck up - you clearly value life.

You are wrong. Killing oneself need lot of courage and suffering. But then you guys will stop anyone who want right to death with nonsense.

Of you really want people to kill themself, make it easy. Otherwise you need to shut the fuck up.

Also kids toys have all sorts of crap chemicals in them even lead was found in many cheap imported toys off Amazon, etc. that little kids are showing in their mouth.

I can only imagine what I was exposed to as a kid by parents that simply weren’t educated in exposing my developing mind and body to these unregulated chemicals in everyday objects.

Best thing to do is to not worry about it too much, because stressing about it won't fix it. It's not in quantities that cause concern unless you overfeed yourself and your kids on these things (like, pounds), same with most other dangerous things in food.

They start to flag things up as dangerous WELL before it even comes close to being dangerous even if you eat extremely high consumption of products.

> what am I supposed to do

Not have any more kids, and discourage others from having kids as well, because you know that they will come to harm.