A compendium of alarming science, health, safety, and parenting headlines to ruin your weekend [emphasis added for dramatic effect]:
- Holy crap, that juicebox is full of lead! That straw might as well be hooked up to the tail pipe of a 1974 Gran Torino. IN 1974. Call your California state representative today and pressure them to vote for Prop 65 so that tighter juicebox regulations can be put in place several years from now! [envirolaw]
- 3,100 Cybex 2.Go infant carriers are being recalled because three shoulder buckles broke and dropped kids on their heads. Well, not on their heads, really. In fact, not really dropped at all. But they could've! [cpsc]
- Oh no! the amount of lead in juice is comparable to the lead in any and everything we eat and drink, including water! It's all around us! And in us! [zrecs]
- 101,000 Circo and Cherokee kids' belts from Target have as much lead as a thousand juiceboxes. [cpsc]
- One single lot of 5,500 Star Trek Nursery-lookin' Beado bead balls sold between March and May 2010 was recalled for inadequate adhesive, which could lead to possible bead chokage. That's "lead" rhymes with bead, not "lead," rhymes with dead. For once. [cpsc]
- 92% of sunscreen causes cancer or something, and all the labels are lying. [environmental working group]
- No problem, though, because the FDA is reviewing its sunscreen labeling requirements! Expect the strong action and/or preliminary results sometime in October, after your kid already has baby cancer. [time]
- Holy crap! The Environmental Law Center's lead-in-juiceboxes study has no methodology or reproducibility! Why not just let the kid teethe on that Chinese belt from Target and spare yourself the suspense? [zrecs]
- A 7-year study in Florida found that paternal involvement literally saves the babies' lives every day for a year. And by paternal involvement, they mean, "father's name listed on the birth certificate." So don't feel too special, it's a pretty low freakin' bar. [sciencedaily]
- Wait, if the average lead levels in common foods is so low it'd take a case of juiceboxes a day to raise a red flag, the HFCS or sugar would become a problem long before the lead. [zrecs]
- Seems that when parents hear their toddler's in the 95th percentile for body mass index, they think it's a good thing. Pediatricians should just say the kid's fat and tell them to lay off the juiceboxes. [sciencedaily]
As Jeremiah from Z Recs put it in an email, "There must be some metaphor for parenting hubs that publish every shocking press release and then move on while others clean up the mess. I bet you can come up with it. And it should have a cute little owl in it."
I'll get right on that! Meanwhile, here's a placeholder:
