The world is a hazardous place

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Life is a road strewn with potholes, wrong turns and tree limbs sticking out at eye-height. Don’t I know that. But some would argue the hazards are more plentiful and to be found in unexpected places.

Yesterday, a PR agent spent 15 minutes trying to convince me that we are riddled with disease for one principal reason: we eat too much calcium. She turned my attention to her doctor-client’s book, which darkly warned -- four times by page 18 -- that calcium is toxic: ‘Calcium hardens concrete. Imagine what it can harden in your body!’ You cannot argue with the logic of that. (Guys, please don’t rush out to stockpile calcium supplements.)

Calcium, it appears, is one of many tree branches jabbing the eye on life’s sidewalk. I just read an issue of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter that reviewed -- poo-pooed, I should say -- another warning, about the hazard of drinking cold water after meals. This reckless activity causes cancer, the reasoning goes, because it slows digestion, giving oil in our guts time to turn to sludge, which then reacts with acids, which leads to the accumulation of more fat, which gives us more tumors -- and may I say right now that I only wish I had paid more attention in chemistry class as a teen instead of attaching Bunsen burners to the water faucet while the teacher wasn’t looking, for I’d obviously now be safer.

The mattress problem bounces on and on -- this scare got a lot of help from a certain manufacturer of mattresses with minimal levels of fire retardants that launched a campaign, People for Clean Beds, to oppose new Consumer Product Safety Commission mattress fire retardant standards. People for Clean Beds claimed these new standards would lead to greater levels of retardants such as boric acid in mattresses, and put 300 million people at risk to save 300 from fire. (A nonprofit organization called STATS, affiliated with George Mason University, estimated that this ‘worst-case scenario of 300 million dead was roughly equal to the combined toll from Black Death, AIDS, and the number of people worldwide who will die from cancer over the next forty years.’) Type ‘toxic’ and ‘mattress’ into Google and you’ll still get a tidal wave of articles and alarming warnings on websites, and I swear I don’t know what to make of them all, but I do know I’m not going to buy a mattress infused with green tea. (Coffee, now...)

Another thing I know: anxiety apparently causes the brain to shrink. And I’ve got enough to worry about already.

-- Rosie Mestel