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?
Bottled water. The plastic contaminates the fluid. Just drink straight from the sink if you live in an area that allows for it!
Tap water in super contaminated with PFAS in most areas, pick your poison
(Or get a reverse osmosis filter)
I switched over to have water delivered to my home in glass bottles (fortunately multi-use glass bottles are still a thing here in Germany). It tastes so much better than the same brand from PET bottles.
(Why don’t I drink tap water? Because I want my water sparkling with CO2 bubbles, and I don’t like the simple carbonaton appliance)
I bet you’re right. If you leave a plastic bottle in the sun, the water tastes god-awful.
It doesn’t even have to change temperature, it is enough that the water remains in the bottle for few days for plastic to start “decomposing” (probably not the correct word for it). And by the time you buy the bottle, it has been long since it was filled in the first place.
Oh, and the expiration date on the water bottles? Obviously it’s not the water getting stale. It’s for the plastic.
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
almond milk
The electric heating pad I sleep on. I wouldn’t be surprised if some study finds that something about sleeping on wires would be kinda bad long-term. Maybe something about residual currents or the minimal magnetic field from the wires, idk
I haven’t been able to use one of these since I used a crummy one about 12 years ago and got burned, but it was so insanely nice to be so toasty.
Yeah, that’s very valid! I’d like to think that the technology got safer in the past years, but honestly I don’t even wanna check and risk having to give up the coziness
The fireproofing chemicals are pretty bad for you.
I guess, but fire isn’t very healthy either I think
Source?
I’ve read articles with such claims, but not really reputable sources.
However I like the idea of the timer ones where in theory you could have the bed preheated for you, but never be in it when it’s on.
Most heated blankets have such a feature
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.
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 plac3s bear 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. The clean air act banned aerosols in 1994.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does it count if I already know whiskey is bad for me?
It absolutely counts, if you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s worse for you than you know.
I wouldn’t expect shaving cream to do it; goo and foam and pretty normal
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!
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.
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.
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
Methadone
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.
