Daily Panic Dose

Okay, today I was the recipient of a link to "Harmful Chemicals in Baby Products", which told me of dangers lurking in my son's soap, shampoo, lotions, and sunscreen. We only use Johnson's No More Tears (go ahead, tell me how it will cause my son to grow a third eye, because then I'll put him in a freak show and RAKE IN THE DOUGH!), no lotions, shampoo, blah blah.

The biggest problem I had with the list was that half the chemicals listed as 'harmful' in the sunscreens were, in fact, the active ingredients in the sunscreens - you know, the ones preventing sunburn and cancer and all that.

I get really tired of these articles with the latest findings or determinations. I know consumer watchdog groups are good and all, but most of the time they just get on my nerves. Maybe it's too many years in manufacturing, and actually dealing with the FDA. Sure, they prevented thalidomide from being prescribed in the US, but when I deal with them it's a lot of "You didn't cross this t" crap.

Last week two articles came out on the same day - one saying that even babies were getting obese, and a second saying that children observing their mothers dieting are permanenty effed in the head with realation to food (I paraphrase). The only interesting article I've seen on the obesity epidemic was a recent Tribune story about urban areas where there are no accessible grocery stores with fresh food. Now THAT hit a point. Whenever I see articles saying "TV bad, exercise good" or some variation thereof, I wonder how I get funding to perform these studies, because they're all about stating the obvious, and I'm pretty dang good at that.

And by the way - my house isn't cleaner because the studies have found that having too clean a house causes increases in asthma and allergies. See how I work those articles to my advantage there?