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?
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
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Yep, I never could get past the taste of plastic in my food.
Only microwave in glass and ceramic!
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.
It could also have thst lead problem older tupperware has, though.
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.
Cosmetic products containing carbomer - it’s literally microplastic acryllic and it’s in EVERYTHING
Commercial yogurt. Yeah maybe it’s just a tasty and healthy probiotic. Or maybe it’s a way for food conglomerates to change our gut bacteria so that we crave even more foods with cheap sugar.
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.
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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 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.
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
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Flavored soda water.
Methadone
Air fryers.
Most of them are designed so poorly that it’s also impossible to get all grease out of them. That can’t be healthy. My sister has a ninja air fryer, you can’t remove the top grate. There is grease build up in there. A friend of mine has one he brings it over during the Super Bowl party, the moment he opens up the lid on it you can smell the old grease come out of it. That’s not an exaggeration. There’s no way in hell that can be healthy. So it won’t surprise me if years from now people go we should never have used those.
It also won’t surprise me too much if there’s some health hazard with them other than just the buildup of grease.
Sidenote, what are these companies thinking to make a product where they know there’s going to be grease that is going to build up, and make it in a way that makes it almost impossible if not completely impossible to clean said grease?
Unless they thought process is: use it three times throw it away go buy a new one.
Huh we bought an expensive air fryer because my in-laws wouldn’t stop bragging about it. It was on super discount because bed bath and beyond was going out of business, but still super expensive. And I’ve never had any problem cleaning it, in fact it’s the easiest dish we own to clean, the grease just wipes out and the tray is removable.
It also won’t surprise me too much if there’s some health hazard with them other than just the buildup of grease.
It’s an electric heating element and a fan, same as a convection oven except it exhausts rather than recirculates the air. Any issues beyond the grease buildup you mention would apply to any electric oven or toaster.
I too have watched Technology Connection’s video on the topic. :P
Yes but with an oven you can get in there and clean it. The grate at the top of the air fryer is built in away, where you can’t really clean it.
I have a toaster oven / convection oven / air fryer combo and it doesn’t suffer from this issue.
Mainly, what I was trying to point out is aside from the grease issue that was pointed out, there’s nothing special about air fryers. Any issue aside from grease buildup would also affect convection ovens, which have existed for a long time with no ill effects noted. It’s just an electric heating element and a fan, they’re not doing anything that special. I don’t think they’re going to be found to be dangerous in the future.
Oh my gosh, I never thought of that!
I bought an air fryer, but honestly, I never use it because I hate cleaning the basket. I didn’t even think about the top!
Adding this one to my list. Definitely nothing good about blasting your food with old oils.
Mine is one of my most non-stick surfaces and usually wipes clean with a paper towel
…. Now that I’ve been trying to move away from teflon
Beer
That’s been around for at least a couple millennia, though; you’d think we’d know by now, right?
I mean frequent consumption is pretty well documented to be bad for your liver, and they don’t call it a beer belly for nothing. Like any kind of indulgence, moderation is key
Also worth noting beer historically was very very light on alcohol, so it was effectively a method of making water safe to drink rather than about having fun getting drunk
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
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.
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Those water flavor squirts, mio or crystal light type stuff. I’ll drink plain water over just about everything else (egg nog is the weakness and exception right now…), but the various lemonades or fruit flavors are always nice to have around. I wouldn’t be surprised if something in their composition is not good for you.
A slightly more titillating answer would be lube. You’re putting something on a mucous membrane, and it’s almost guaranteed that some will be absorbed or ingested.
I think if they find that these are a problem, any flavored drink will be found bad too. It’s the same thing, just concentrated or not concentrated.
The latter reason is why I use Yes WB which is an organic lube pH balanced for the… Mucous membrane.
Huel. I’m just waiting for some
random internet persondoctor to tell me how exactly I’m making my already shaky health significantly worse because I’m toolazytired for anything more than powder in water.Also, the decades-old radiator in my flat is probably just spewing all sorts of hazardous particles and nobody will know until they do an autopsy on me.
I used to do Huel pretty regularly because one of my medicines makes me not want food and shakes are tolerable. But they kept selling out of my favorite flavor!
Here’s hoping it’s not too toxic!
Most radiators are just a big metal thing which a hot liquid slowly flows through to radiate the heat into the space. Kinda hard for that to be bad for you unless you burn yourself
If it’s any consolation I’ve been on at LEAST 80% Huel (and this is surely a low-ball; on the vast majority of days I’ll go 100% Huel) since 2020 and my recent blood panel came back great.
UHT milk.
I’ve been mad about UHT milk ever since I discovered I can’t make clotted cream with the ultra high temperature stuff. I don’t want unpastuerized milk but ffs, let me have some texture I can work with!
You make clotted cream from milk? Doesn’t that take like a week? Don’t you usually start with some form of cream?
I mean, I made it once from double cream, but they don’t sell that here in the Netherlands, and it’s so not worth the time compared to just buying a jar of clotted cream.
More power to you though!
You can make it from milk and butter if I remember. You can make it from double cream (heavy whipping cream in the US).
And I would love to just buy a jar but I can’t find them anywhere except online!! It’s such a shame because I grew up enjoying it, and went a few years too busy to have anything with it, and then when I went to buy it… nowhere.
Eta: If someone has a solution for me in the US thst doesn’t involve paying a fortune online, I am all ears! More ears than anything really.
