Nothing. Nor is eating a McDonalds hamburger, cleaning with chemicals, eating store bought vegetables or anything else hundreds of millions of people do every day with no ill effects. Reading some of these posts you would think the only safe way to exist would to drink boiled and filtered water only and only eat veggies grown in pure soil procured from under a glacier in Nepal or something.
We used to live to 47 on average now its 76 so apparently some of this crap we are doing must be working lol.
I do agree with you partially. I stated before that a lot of this stuff is sensationalized and made to seem worse than it really is; however I also believe that using a little more common sense to limit exposure where possibly can only be helpful in the long run.
People around the world suffer immensely from exposure to toxins that they never knew they were even dealing with. Think about the chemicals that were commonplace just 30 or 40 years ago that everyone would call you crazy for playing around with today:
- DDT
- CFCs
- Asbestos- insulation
- Lead- paint
- Mercury- thermostats, etc
- Arsenic- still in pressurized wood, but being phased out
This is just a short list off the top of my head, but just do a quick google search for banned or severely restricted chemicals and you will see what I'm talking about. All of those compounds were in use at one time and were subsequently banned because they were shown to have negative side effects that outweighed their benefits.
My point is that for all our sophistication, we are still resorting to trial and error(using ourselves as guinea pigs) as a justifiable means for advancement regardless of possible negative side effects.
For example, anyone remember agent orange? Used to defoliate large areas of Vietman during the war. It was later found that a highly toxic strain of dioxin was used in the chemical. The devastating long term effects of this compound became known as American soldiers returned from the war with a wide range of serious health problems that have persisted through to their children in many cases. The Vietnamese have suffered more; my brother spent a month in that country last year and came back with some pretty disturbing insight into how many horribly disfigured people, including children that he saw on the streets. This is a pretty decent article if you want to read a little more:
Agent Orange's Long Legacy
Agent orange is pretty terrible for just about everything living, right? so then why is it still in use? I'd bet most of you have a bottle of it in your garage:
Is Monsanto's RoundUp the new Agent Orange?
My point here is assuming that the chemicals we use are generally safe is a HUGE misconception.
Implied in the pursuit of health is interest in the prior avoidance of death or severe illness/incapacitation.
On a prioritized list of the most likely causes of the above, something like a microwave oven wouldn't even appear unless theoretical/hypothetical causes were included. In any event, it would be nowhere near page 1 on such a list. A separate report would be more fitting.
The top portion of such a list is likely to contain some inconvenient items -- like automobile driving, for one. If you have to drive 5 miles to donate your microwave oven, you've almost certainly risked more than continuing to use it.
So the main problem with concern over obscure risks is that they can be a distraction from page 1 items that may have been ignored.
To illustrate how signal can tend to get lost in noise, I'll take a quick stab at annotating your list. Objectively, smoking would have more effect than all the other items combined.
- Dont cook with teflon coated pans - Nowhere near page 1
- Use glass or steel instead of plastic - Nowhere near page 1
- Buy clothes made of natural fibers instead of synthetic - Separate Report
- Dont smoke? - Page 1
- Wear a respirator when you are sanding or painting - Dose dependent, use common sense
- Dont huff gasoline - Dose dependent, use common sense
- wear gloves when you handle automotive or cleaning chemicals - Dose dependent, use common sense
- clean your stuff with vinegar and baking soda instead of bleach - Nowhere near page 1
- buy organic where possible - Nowhere near page 1
- use a R/O filter for your water - Nowhere near page 1
- dont use a microwave - Separate Report
This was more or less just off the top of my head, but I essentially agree with you. My main concern about those items is daily use with no research testing long term cumulative effects, especially combined with who knows how many other compounds we interact with and never think about.
