The Toxicity Panic

| | 2023-05-10T19:55

The supposed connection made a bigger impression than the refutation
📝 highlights naivety of parents

felt a lot like obsessive-compulsive disorder could fall back on detoxify-your-home lists published by Time, Newsweek, USA Today, and WebMD
📝 mocking the toxicity posts

Or had detoxification become a kind of collective anorexia, a way for mothers to refuse to live in a world we found too terrifying, another means of bubble wrapping our darlings?
📝 the modern question and antithesis to the toxicity masterplot

a rejection of modernity by women who failed to appreciate how technology had freed them
📝 mockery of the ridiculousness of the situation

A common explanation for why women and minorities are more risk averse is that they are less likely to work in science and tend to share less in the benefits of technology, and are therefore less willing to trust the institutions that manage risk in our society.
📝 points to th environmental justice movement

In its most recent report on these body burdens, in 2009, the CDC stated that nearly everyone it tested had detectable amounts of BPA; of polybrominated diphenylethers, flame retardants that can thwart a fetus’s neurological development; of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the really bad stuff in non-stick cookware that has also been shown to thwart the proper development of young animals; of perchlorate, a chemical used in making rockets and fireworks, which can keep the thyroid from making necessary hormones; of a gasoline additive now banned in most states, methyl tert-butyl ether.
📝 everyone in the modern day is exposed to toxins

The researchers found that the children “were born sooner, weighed less, and had smaller heads” than those whose mothers hadn’t eaten the fish. Moreover, the more that PCBs were found in their cord blood, the worse the child did on tests for things such as short-term memory. By age eleven, the most highly exposed kids had an average IQ deficit of 6.2.
📝 scientifically backed proof of toxicity in the environment and effects on the human body

based on several hundred studies that declared with certainty that BPA was causing “organizational changes … in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals.”
📝 support for the extent of scientific studies to prove toxicity

If the endocrine-disruption hypothesis and DOHad are right, then we can no longer say that it’s the dose that makes the poison; it’s the timing that makes the poison
📝 notion of what makes toxins toxic

Childhood cancers are up 20 percent since 1975. Rates of kidney, thyroid, liver, and testicular cancers in adults have been steadily increasing.
📝 a metric to evaluate against chavez’ speech

“The science is really very well grounded,” says Carl Cranor, a law professor and the author of a recent encyclopedic critique of U.S. chemicals regulation, Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants.
📝 expert opinions?

Individual states are beefing up oversight of chemicals in consumer products; Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Chicago, among others, have banned BPA in food and drink containers. Sweeping E.U. regulations are forcing U.S. manufacturers to submit extensive documentation on roughly 30,000 chemicals or lose access to the European market. Even the industry lobby, the American Chemistry Council, has called for changes to TSCA to avoid a hodgepodge of regulations.
📝 the initial step of government taking action

One scientist, Robert Chapin of Pfizer, noted bluntly that it would take an act of Congress to force chemical companies to do extensive, European-style testing: “We will do those kinds of studies when the regulators say we must.”
📝 the corrupt nature of the industry corporations

The Toxicity Panic

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