This is sort of a shower thought because this morning I was using some shaving cream and I thought, if it turns out in 5 years this was giving me cancer, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Comes out a goo, ejected from a can with force, immediately becomes a foam?
Do you have anything you use that you think might be too good to be true?
The internet and all electronic equipment. I think they are doing something much more sinister than whatever is reported so far.
Using it no… the trash yes. The amount of materials (toxic and rare) which goes to the bin is staggering.
Air conditioning. All kinds of bacteria, dust, mold, algae, who knows what else is going through the evaporator, through the air ducts and blasting right into your lungs. Yeah, there’s a filter, but it’s on the intake side. It doesn’t account for what has built up in there over the years and it doesn’t catch everything. The one in your car can be equally as gross.
you get Legionnaires’ disease from air conditioners. It’s called that because it was figured out after a bunch of people died from improperly maintained air conditioners at a hotel hosting a Legionnaires convention in the 70’s!
That’s why I use a mini split ductless unit. A lot easier to clean.
Sugar
That’s not exactly secretly bad… It’s just bad
Yeah, the natural state of humans is ketosis. Glucose stinks and we don’t need it!
This is not really a secret. The sugar industry lobbied so hard to have sugar included in everything and well, we’re seeing the damage.
I think sugar by itself is not so bad. The fact it is in amost all types of prepared foods from the store is really bad. But I’m not a specialist.
Ooh, excellent one.
Warfarin blood thinners.
Wouldn’t be surprised if we find later that after decades of use that someone’s body can gain resistance to it. I’d be fucked since I’m on the blood thinner train for life*.
*or until we can start printing human cells to recreate human parts
Flavored soda water.
Methadone
I’m so nervous I’m going to find out aquaphor is bad. I’ve been spreading it on my baby’s diaper area since they were born. I know she’s absorbing it right into her little body. There’s been so many articles about how diapers and tampons and pads are all just awful for us and full of lead and who knows what else and we’re putting them right against our mucus membranes and just poisoning ourselves.
If you want to try something else, Burt’s bees has a healing ointment for babies that is shea butter based instead of petroleum. Never actually used it on a baby myself lol but it worked wonders for me on my scalp (I have curly biracial hair and I’m picky about what goes in it) and scaly winter hands!
All of these Omega-3 and so-called healthy foods that have markup prices.
Like, an organic banana vs a original banana. What the fuck am I missing out on here?
Like, an organic banana vs a original banana. What the fuck am I missing out on here?
Mostly I’ve noticed the organic ones have more flavour. If there’s nutritional differences, I’d mostly expect it to just be more of the same nutrients in the organic version.
i don’t notice a difference in bananas.
I was taught to buy organic if you eat the outside (apples, herbs) but not if you peel it (bananas, garlic).
Side by side the organic herbs and spinach seem way healthier at kroger but the garlic and bananas seem identical on the inside. taste the same to me but i’m getting old and that could be just me losing my sense of taste.
at new seasons the non organic produce looks as lush as the organic stuff at kroger.
I wouldn’t expect shaving cream to do it; goo and foam and pretty normal
Toothbrush. In one hand it scrubs food and gunk away and helps distribute fluoride toothpaste around. On the other it’s made of tiny plastic bristles that are probably disintegrating when in your mouth and growing a fun ecosystem when out of it.
In theory, your toothbrush is getting a clean twice a day. Its already covered in nice sudsy toothpaste foam and you’ll (hopefully) be rubbing and rinsing that off.
The plastic disintegrating in your mouth however, yeah, I can’t dispute that!
This is probably why dentists recommend replacing them frequently.
Ever since I heard of microplastic, this has been on my mind quite a bit. Although it might not be “ingested” if they are micro enough, it can probably still get absorbed every time you brush. Multiple that by every day of your life and, boom, now there’s plastic in my balls and I’m 3D printing on my girl’s face.
Swirl necklace
boom, now there’s plastic in my balls and I’m 3D printing on my girl’s face.
I’m stealing it
This is a clever answer and now I completely agree with you.
the number of things growing on your toothbrush is definitely non zero but being frequently scrubbed in sodium fluoride probably inhibits a good portion of it\
related though, electronic toothbrushes are way, way better in terms of tooth care, and my understanding the last time I read through marketing bullshit a few years ago was that the rotational/mechanical ones were better than the ones that just vibrate i.e. Oral B vs Sonicare, but the fucking Oral B toothbrush heads have fucking exposed bits of the mechanism, like, there’s these holes in it, so like, guess what? mold grows in there
I don’t understand how that isn’t like, you know, a massive design flaw that should be changed immediately, but I guess they want people to swap toothbrushes more often than mold would grow, idk
A bit of advice from some dental organizations and my family member who is a dentist, you really shouldn’t use the same toothbrush twice a day. The toothbrush should be left to completely dry out before reusing and that takes longer than 16 hours in most climates.
I bought a uv tooth brush sterilizer. Not sure if it’s doing anything useful but it’s a colourful addition to the bathroom.
UV is good at breaking down plastics ….
I work in hazardous materials handling and safety, and I studied chemistry. I’ve done a lot of soil remediation and I’m pretty up to date on how we (Europeans) handle the safety of our air, food and water.
So, good news: your air hasn’t been cleaner since basically we started burning coal. Your drinking water hasn’t been this safe since, oh, pre-agrarian times. Your food is probably less nutritious per gram thanks to faster growing food, but your diet is (potentially) better than any human has ever had (depending on your personal choices).
That said, there are some things I avoid like the plague:
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Swimming in open water. It’s (potentially) full of parasites, toxic algae, human and cattle feces and chemical runoff. Probably not all at once, but still. YMMV if you don’t live near the sea, mountain streams are much cleaner then those at the river delta.
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Home grown food from urban gardens. Your soil is probably completely untested, and the idea of “maybe I shouldn’t just pour chemical waste out of the window” is barely 4 decades old. And that’s counting the dubious quality of planter soil that is basically unregulated, and what people use as decoration. (Do NOT use wooden railroad ties or tires as planters for food). And of course what people use as pesticides isn’t exactly closely monitored either.
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Drinking water from wells, springs etc. see all the above.
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Ordering anything with wish/aliexpress that comes in contact with food. You know that stuff is completely unregulated, why the hell would you lick it? Nobody knows what it’s made of.
And there’s one thing I don’t avoid, but it’s super unhealthy: wood fires. Yeah, a hearth or a campfire is awesome, but the smoke is super fucking bad for you. The carcinogens are stronger and last longer than in cigarettes, and its a hell of a lot more of them. I lie to myself and say it’s worth it though, and that I don’t do it every day, and other bad excuses.
Wood fires are bad? Does this have to do with the wood? What about charcoal? No more bbqs then?
Charcoal isn’t as bad as wood, it creates less smoke and the most complex chemicals are already gone. Gas is better, since it burns much cleaner, and electric obviously doesn’t create any gasses at all.
On the other hand, grilling and smoking red meat means dripping fat, which means smoke, meaning you create a whole new set of PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), which you breathe in and get stuck to the meat and those are carcinogens. On top of that, red meat is already not too great for you. Eating burned food (charring) is also really unhealthy.
But assuming you don’t spend every day breathing mostly bbq-smoke and gasses, I wouldn’t worry about this too much. If your main diet is home grilled beef over self-made charcoal, you definitely need to reevaluate your lifestyle choices though.
This was written by Hank Hill
Welp. Thanks for sharing. Is burning candles also bad?
Burning essentially anything but hydrogen or methane is generally bad to some degree or another (and even the latter has a carbon monoxide risk), but it ultimately comes down to how much smoke it makes. Smoke is bad to breathe
Home grown food from urban gardens. Your soil is probably completely untested, and the idea of “maybe I shouldn’t just pour chemical waste out of the window” is barely 4 decades old.
And let’s not forget that any soil near a road had a ton of lead released nearby throughout much of the last century, and that just stays there. As well as lead paint chips from buildings.
There’s cornfields next to airports where avgas still contains lead. The lead concentration in the soil around airports is very high. There’s also fields next to old Air Force bases where they used firefighting foam that contains PFAS. They would run drills with the foam, so it was used fairly regularly.
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Plastic food containers. I mean, we already know it’s pretty bad, but I would not be surprised if it ends up being way worse than we think. That, and most aerosols. Febreze, hairspray, spray tans, things of that nature
I just saw an article the other day that black plastic utensils are toxic. I’m right there with you.
A couple places near me still use styrofoam. I can’t get past it.
Because of those articles, I just got rid of my black plastic utensils, but I’ve been using them over a decade so if they were contaminated, it’s probably too late
It also mostly applies to new plastics which are made from recycled plastics. If you have an ancient one, it’s probably not made from recycled plastic and could be totally fine.
I stopped microwaving plastic containers like 15-20 years ago. Hopefully that’s enough.
Yep, I never could get past the taste of plastic in my food.
Only microwave in glass and ceramic!
Febreze is air pressure driven.
I think you’re confusing volatile organic compounds like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and HFCFs with general aerosols. CFCs destroy the ozone layer, and are banned worldwide.
Aerosola are just droplets in a gas. Clouds are aerosols. They’re perfectly safe to use in general, assuming the droplets and the gas are safe.
I get where they’re coming from! I was a kid when the aerosols were burning a hole in the ozone layer, and it taught me to distrust anything that can come out of a can too quickly.
Clean air act banned cfcs, not aerosols. Aerosols are just pressurized gases.
Well aerosols are tiny particles, but often created and propelled using pressurized glasses.
Not really “secretly” bad for you, but all the plastic in our lives. I wonder how we’ll ever replace it cause everything you buy at the supermarket (in developed countries) is wrapped in plastic.
Everything you touch and use involves plastics and petrochemicals. Even stuff you wouldn’t think of like the coatings that allow street signs to reflect better and have massively improved safety. Lightbulbs? No more efficiency for you, most LEDs are on a plastic substrate. We will never get away from plastic, not at this point. You could make it so that food isn’t wrapped in plastic and that wouldn’t make a dent in our plastic use.
You could make it so that food isn’t wrapped in plastic and that wouldn’t make a dent in our plastic use.
Sure, but it might curb how much plastic ends up in our bodies. I have to assume that food wrapped in plastic has a greater impact in that regard than LEDs.
wrapped in plastic
I agree. I think it’s worse than we already know.
Our phones are probably doing something to us
I read somewhere that the existence of the internet massively stifles our ability to reason. For every question I have, spending a few minutes to ponder what the most plausible answer is provides a small workout for my brain. If everything I’m curious about is answered within seconds, I don’t get those mental workouts.
I think that comes down to your desire to learn. One person might just repeat a google answer but another person might spend some time thinking about why it’s the right answer.
Google is how people get degrees after all, it’s the modern day version of hunting down books in libraries
I think there are many questions where it’s very easy to convince yourself the solution is obvious after you’ve been shown it, but it’s less obvious for someone who is taking the time to try to figure it out on their own.
I teach college math courses (usually around calculus-level), and for every exam I give I will write a practice exam to post online a week before, and I’ll devote the lecture prior to the exam to reviewing those problems. I try to make every problem that appears on the exam very similar to one that was on the practice. The students who attempt the problems before the review session, even the students who get incorrect solutions in the process, will bulldoze their exams and will say it was essentially identical to the practice, while the students who just watch me give the solutions and copy down what I’m writing will tell me the practice was easy but this was barely similar at all.
When you see an obvious solution immediately, you completely bypass seeing potential stumbling blocks which might have tripped you up.
I get what you’re saying about how people establish stronger pathways when they discover something on their own rather than copying something down but at the same time, that’s how education works. You have something explained to you simply first, whether that’s by human instruction like a prof or written instruction/visual demonstration like doing your own research on google. Of course there are low quality/high quality internet sources just like there are low quality/high quality professors and that goes back to how much of a desire the student has to learn, whether they just want to copy and paste answers or actually understand why it is that answer.
As a math teacher I’m sure you can agree that high level academics depends on having a understanding of the fundamentals. If I don’t understand algebra or polynomials then It’s going to take me a while to get a hang of derivatives or calculus and that doesn’t mean I’m stupid or lazy, I just haven’t devoted my life to that specific field because I have 9 other courses to study at the same time. Graduation numbers would be insanely low if we expected kids to figure everything out on their own without access to previous knowledge like the internet. Having the world’s library at your fingertips gives you the ability to copy and paste but also the ability to be an autodidact, it really depends on that specific person’s desire and goals.
I had a lot of foreign students as TA’s for my calc courses, I know it’s not their fault but it was really difficult for a lot of us to understand their accents and we didn’t want to be rude by asking them to repeat themselves all the time. If I didn’t learn google-fu for explanations on concepts I would have failed those classes easily.
I was trying to use an example from personal experience to illustrate the benefit, but my point is that immediate answers wasn’t an option not too long ago, so curiosities you actually did want answered would necessarily have that delay. Being able to learn things well in spite of this shift is becoming a skill not everyone has. It’s something that needs to be nurtured, and it’s now easy to neglect, which really can affect everyone, although obviously some attitudes and lifestyles will be hit harder than others.
Something of a tangent but honestly I hate the way academia works here in general and I resent my role in contributing to math being used as a barrier to a better life. Unfortunately, I do need a career of some sort and there are worse things I could be doing. So I play by the rules well enough to keep my job and just try to do my best to be understanding.
I didn’t even enjoy math myself until I took an analysis course because I thought a math minor would help with job prospects. I always had an easy time with math and when I took analysis I got a D the first time and barely scraped by with a C the second. Math is actually interesting when you feel there’s creativity required in problem-solving, but it’s not reasonable to demand that in a lower-level math course because it doesn’t mesh well with a course existing primarily as a roadblock for students.
A hardworking student might still struggle to develop that creativity quickly enough to get through the course unscathed, which is fine if you’re enrolled because you just want to learn, but not fine for students trying to get good grades or at least pass everything to get through as quickly as possible. A student might have the crazy idea that failing is a financial hit or something. The result is you’re simply put through a grind until you voluntarily take on a course beyond the calculus sequence.
What I’m getting at is that I think your complaints all stem from the fact that, in spite of what we’re all forced to pretend, education is not the main purpose of academia.
We know that depending on your use it can ruin your attention span. But I agree, it’s probably worse than we know.
Probably my asbestos fake snow.
I’ll stick to my anthrax lip balm.
But your snow is, at least, fireproof!
Not all snow can make that promise. Some is quite flammable.
I didn’t even know such a thing existed!
It was pretty common, even after the dangers of asbestos were well-known. The most famous example is probably the Wizard of Oz, but it was used all over the place.
The skin paints weren’t so great either.
