My experience is that I have to proactively educate myself as best I can about the physical risks of daily living. This includes a staggering amount of items: food, clothes, containers, cookware, makeup, cleaning supplies, paint, home goods, medicine, electronics. It's an impossible task, but I see a lot of people doing the same: building a personalized set of things to watch out for. (Buy organic, wash produce/grains/beans, avoid anything scented, avoid homeopathic, avoid styrofoam, avoid hydrogenated oil, avoid Teflon/PTFEs, avoid perc, avoid food dyes, avoid plastic fabrics, on and on)
Government has a role in making this information accessible at the time of purchase or use. I can read the food ingredients, the fabric material, the cancer warning, the VOC rating. And I can make a simple decision about what to buy if I so desire.
But there are untold cases where the information is not easily accessible, where it's difficult to identify a trustworthy source, and where we are advertised products that actively hide their harm.
I would like to have more confidence that I'm buying safe products. I don't know what the solution is, so I just keep adding to my list.
Well put! I feel like the media is supposed to be doing a better job at warning people about these things. I have a hard time believing it's not profitable enough for them to do. Are they as in the dark about it all as everyone else?
Government has a role in making this information accessible at the time of purchase or use. I can read the food ingredients, the fabric material, the cancer warning, the VOC rating. And I can make a simple decision about what to buy if I so desire.
But there are untold cases where the information is not easily accessible, where it's difficult to identify a trustworthy source, and where we are advertised products that actively hide their harm.
I would like to have more confidence that I'm buying safe products. I don't know what the solution is, so I just keep adding to my list.