Something I should have been worried about

So, after months of public worrying on this blog, I find myself on a 10-hour journey through three airports, several time zones, and an immigration checkpoint bringing my daughter, Cinderella, to Mexico to spend Xmas with my wife's family (she will join us later, after attending an ill-timed conference).

Here's what I worry about (in no particular order):

* The unlikely event of a water landing

* The airline losing my rolling suitcase that they forced me to gate-check

* The possibility that I am angering the one true g-d by celebrating a holiday outside my religion

Here's what actually happened:

* Cinderella got a stomach bug and puked all over me for 10 straight hours. Poor kid. She's a trooper though. Not sure how she's going to feel when I explain that she won't be allowed to eat all that candy in her stocking for another day...

FDA Says Mercury Is a Vegetable

Okay, maybe not a vegetable, but the FDA is reportedly considering rescinding a previous warning to pregnant and nursing women and children because of the danger of consuming mercury. Previously the FDA and EPA had warned baby-mamas and kids against eating more than 12 ounces of fish, and to avoid swordfish, shark, tilefish and king mackerel altogether.

Officials at the EPA are not happy, as are white-coated environmentalists. Richard Wiles, the executive director of the Environmental Working Group, said "It's a commentary on how low FDA has sunk as an agency. It was once a fierce protector of America's health, and now it's nothing more than a patsy for polluters."

Chuck E Cheese Melee

A recent report vindicates my avoidance of Chuck E Cheese. My main reasons have been that I worry about restaurants that trumpet their associations with rodents, and that they are brainwashing Sesame Street-watching munchkins with their ads on PBS. Plus, I also hear that the food sucks and the place is a rip-off.

As if all that weren't enough, the Wall Street Journal reports that the police are being called in to break up more fights at some Chuck E Cheese locations than at nearby biker bars. In some areas, the restaurants have been forced to stop serving alcohol and start staffing the place with armed guards after incidents like an 80-person melee in Flint Michigan earlier this year.

Now, the only way you were going to drag me into one of these places was with the promise of beer, so that's another strike against them. However, Rebeldad seems to disagree.

Among other incidents in the article:

In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.

Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.

Toys will kill you

According to a new report by the Michigan-based Ecology Center, 1 out of every three toys they examined (out of 1,500) tested positive for "medium" to "high" levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals.

The full report can be found here.

No more raw pork for Cinderella

Actually we're cutting out all pork products. Why, well how about this news story from ABC news:

It's Not a Tumor, It's a Brain Worm: Doctor Surprised to Find a Worm Living Inside a Woman's Brain.

Late last summer, Rosemary Alvarez of Phoenix thought she had a brain tumor. But on the operating table her doctor discovered something even more unsightly -- a parasitic worm eating her brain.

"We've got a lot more of cases of this in the United States now," said Raymond Kuhn, professor of biology and an expert on parasites at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "Upwards of 20 percent of neurology offices in California have seen it."

The pork tapeworm has plagued people for thousands of years. The parasite, known as cysticercosis, lives in pork tissue, and is likely the reason why Jewish and Muslim dietary laws ban pork.

Damn, but I love bacon. But we should never forget what Khan did to Chekov.

Kids sure do eat a lot of sugar!

I went to Cinderella's Pre-K class for the morning. I was there to read a story (The Guest by George Marshall) and try not to cause too much trouble.

Now I'm a firm believer that life needs some sugar to counter all the bitterness in the world, but I have to say that the quantity of the sweet stuff being consumed by the future leaders of America was just a bit out of hand.

At breakfast (free for all), the choices include Frosted Flakes and French toast with corn syrup (would it be that hard to get real maple syrup here in New England?). Luckily, I send Cinderella off to pick out a book while I'm picking out her breakfast, but do we really need to be handing out Frosted Flakes? They also have stacks of chocolate milk that they hand out at lunchtime.

At snack time, all the kids eat something packed from home. Cinderella gets raisins, a whole wheat roll with butter or jam, a stick of string cheese, or some fresh fruit. I also pack her some milk to drink. One or two of the other kids had something along those lines. All the rest had fruit rollups, Rice Krispy Treats, cookies (!), and juice (otherwise known as liquid sugar).

I wasn't able to stick around for lunch or the afternoon snack, but I figure it was more along the same lines.

By my estimate, the little munchkins must have ingested about 2 cups of sugar and/or corn sweetener apiece.

And then we worry about why they're all bouncing off the walls?

Just saying...

Scary Chinese Fortune Cookie

Not that they want anyone to get really worried, but the FDA has just ordered that all shipments of food products (for both humans and pets) must be tested first for melamine.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the FDA acted after 60 or so tests of Chinese candy and crackers tested positive for the additive, which has sickened tens of thousands of Chinese children, and caused at least four deaths.

Melamine is a particularly nasty chemical substance that has many industrial uses, but is toxic to humans, especially infants and children. Food suppliers have been illegally using it as a cheap filler.

The New York Times reports that in addition to the previously reported White Rabbit candy, consumers are being urged to worry about breaded shrimp, dietary supplements, and protein powders and shakes.

Consumer advocates are pleased that their worrying is being heard, but urges the testing to expand to cover egg and fish products, foods that have recently been found to contain the harmful additive.

China keeps putting scary stuff in food

New reports today about the growing tainted food scandal in China. Seems they have been putting melamine not only into milk products (including baby milk formula), but also feed for animals. The chemical has now been found in eggs and egg products, but further testing is underway and the New York Times reports that it may have spread to everything from pork and chicken to bread, cakes, and seafood (hmm, sounds like the pu pu platter).

Melamine is a particularly nasty chemical substance that has many industrial uses, but is toxic to humans, especially infants and children. Food suppliers have been illegally using it as a cheap filler.

So far the only stuff that's been detected in the US food supply has been White Rabbit candy at import shops. But the extent of the contamination of the food supply doesn't bode well, and certainly isn't good for Chinese kids, where so far over 50,000 people have fallen ill and several babies have died.

Oh right, and the whole tainted pet food thing a year ago (note to self: stop eating Meow Mix).

Kids' Cereal Not Good For Kids

According to recent investigative reports, the most popular breakfast cereals (as opposed to the dinner ones, you know) are the dietary equivalent of either a bag of potato chips or a doughnut.

A recent study by Consumer Reports of the 27 brands of cereal most heavily marketed to kids showed that 11 had as much sugar in a regular serving as a glazed doughnut. Interestingly, both Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles scored better than Post's Golden Crisps (not that the Pebbles are doing your kids any favors).

Major cereal companies have been responding to parental concern by giving cereals new names, thus the Sugar Smacks and Super Sugar Crisps of our wayward youth are now Honey Smacks and Golden Crisps (although the sugar content is the same).

The only ones that Consumer Reports investigators will let you serve your kid without a disapproving glare are Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Life, and Kix (as long as you serve them with a glass of milk, a piece of fruit, some broccoli, and a multivitamin).

Meanwhile in England, consumer groups are charging that when the big cereal companies create reduced sugar varieties, they end up boosting the salt content to the point that they equal that of potato chips (or "crisps").

So that's it. From now on we're skipping the middle man and are just taking Cinderella to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.

Future Red Sox Secret Weapon

Ok, things didn't turn out like we hoped. But, hey, there's always next year!

Absolute Power and the Four Year Old Mind

Cinderella is channeling the wicked stepmother lately. She was Line Leader at her pre-k class the other day. For the uninitiated, this means that she got to be at the head of the line for the day.

Me: So how was it being line leader today?

Cinderella: It was great! All the other kids had to be my servants and do everything I said!

It's a great time to invest!

This pretty much sums up my feelings about the current financial meltdown.

Don't worry about the angels

I had a little chat with my daughter Cinderella today:

Cinderella: Did the Red Sox win?

Worried Dad: Yes, they beat the Angels!

Cinderella: Won't God be angry?

Worried Dad: No, God is very happy about this. And besides, the Red Sox don't need wings to fly.

Beware the White Rabbit - Tainted Candy Found in US Stores

The tainted Chinese dairy product scandal has finally hit the U.S. Bags of the popular Chinese White Rabbit candy tainted with Melamine have been found on store shelves in Connecticut.

According to the International Herald Tribune

Melamine is a chemical additive at the heart of China's contaminated dairy scare. It is used to make plastics and fertilizers, but it is sometimes illegally mixed into food products, including milk, because its high levels of nitrogen can help fool tests that measure protein levels.

In September, Chinese authorities acknowledged that more than 53,000 Chinese infants had been sickened after consuming powdered baby formula that had been contaminated with melamine. Of that total, 13,000 were hospitalized and four have died.

Please don't feed your head.

Hands Free Cell Phones Can Make Men Shoot Blanks

First the people in white coats tell us that regular cell phones will fry our brains so everybody needs to use those ridiculous hands-free things (making it much harder for people to distinguish between certified crazy people who talk to themselves in the street and regular crazy people talking on invisible phones).

Now a new study by some white coat types in Cleveland are warning that men who use hands-free phones may be frying their sperm. That's because guys keep their phones in their pockets when they're yakking on the headset.

The researchers collected um, ounces and ounces of man juice and then held phones up to half the group. Then they counted how many little guys were still swimming around. (Why do I get the feeling that this was more fun for the sperm donors than for the researchers?)

The result was that the zapped samples had lower motility (movement) and viability (live spermies). Fortunately, there was no DNA damage to the ones that did survive, so if one of the guys survives the nuclear holocaust, the critter will be OK.

In the end, though, keeping your phone in your pocket might still be a more appealing path to male infertility than the one that Mike at Unraveling Life's Mysteries describes.

Someone On Wall Street Ate the Brown Acid

I'm beginning to think that this whole financial meltdown and recovery plan is due to a couple of guys on Wall Street having a bad drug experience.

Here's how the conversation probably went:

DAY ONE

CEO #1: "Hey man, I just thought of something."

CEO #2: "What?"

CEO #1: "All this money."

CEO #2: "Yeah?"

CEO #1: "None of it is real, man!"

CEO #2: "Whoa. Wait, what do you mean?"

CEO #1: "It's just like blips or something. We spend all of our time trying to kill each other over electronic blips and stuff."

CEO #2: "Zeroes and ones, man."

CEO #1: "Exactly! I mean, like, one day a computer says that a house is worth $200,000 and the next day it says it's worth $100,000, even though the same person is living in it!"

CEO #2: "They sell houses for $100,000??"

CEO #1: "Whatever, man. The point is, it's not even paper losses, it's just blips in some giant computer or something!"

CEO #2: "Zeroes and ones, man."

CEO #1: "Exactly! Now, what if everybody had this same realization at the same time? What if, just by us thinking this out loud, everybody's going to wake up tomorrow and have this same thought??"

CEO #2: "Then we'd be totally hosed."

DAY TWO

CEO #2: "WAKE UP MAN!! It happened exactly like you said!"

CEO #1: "What?"

CEO #2: "The zeroes and ones! They're all gone!!!!"

CEO #1: "Uh oh."

DAY THREE

CEO #2: "What are we going to do, man? What are we going to do?! We messed everything up!! People are freaking out all over the place!! We've got to get the blips back!!"

CEO #1: "Wait man, just wait. Don't freak out. Remember Ben and Hank in DC? They have this crazy machine that prints money."

CEO #2: "A machine that prints money? But we need billions! Maybe trillions! Can they do that???"

CEO #1: "Don't worry, man! I just dosed their coffee."

CEO #2: "Whoa."

Just one really scary word: Plastics

Plastics were the future, but they sucked. Okay, Bakelite was cool, but now you can only find it on stuff in yard sales and Ebay.

Now of course, thanks to the Internet, we know that plastics are truly evil and will destroy us all. Or something like that.

Honestly, I'd been trying to avoid thinking about this too hard because Cinderella uses plastic cups, eats with plastic utensils, and we wrap her up in Saran Wrap when she's naughty. I thought I'd wait until the people in white coats had figured out if this was something I really needed to worry about or not.

Turns out I do (and you should too).

As you've probably heard, the problem is with plastics that have bisphenol A, otherwise known as BPA. Some people in white coats did a really big study on humans and found that people with high levels of BPA had higher levels of heart disease, diabetes, and liver abnormalities.

Of course, like all scientific debates, there are two sides to this. On one side are researchers like the authors of the study and Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri at Columbia who commented that the findings of the study were "the nail in the coffin" (hopefully he was referring to plastics and not us). Also on this side are people like Patricia Hunt, a geneticist at Washington State University who is researching possible links between BPA and birth defects, miscarriages, and other nasty stuff.

On the other side are chemical industry funded scientists who claim that there's absolutely nothing to worry about. The FDA apparently rests its claims that BPA-laden plastics pose no danger based on two chemical industry funded reports.

As worried consumers we can stop using BPA-laden plastic baby bottles, eyeglasses, DVD's, water bottles, and food containers. Or we could bug our government (or elect a new one) to force companies to get rid of this stuff.

Toy helicopter explosions continue to terrorize nation

I don't know how I got started on this whole exploding toy helicopter thing. Since starting the blog I've documented more than two recalls per month, generally because they burst into flames, causing property damage, injury from burns, and widespread panic.

On Thursday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (official motto: we don't want any more money, unless it's given to us by the people we regulate) recalled another one.

The "Protocol" remote-control mini helicopter has the nasty habit of overheating and burning people's fingertips. The copter is made by Ashley Collection, Inc., and is made in China.

I'm starting to develop a theory. China is trying to destroy us all. I'll elaborate in later posts.

In the meantime, if you're jonesing for a toy helicopter, I suggest something along these lines:

Particle Board = Death

We've previously discussed how granite counter tops are radioactive. But as one astute commenter pointed out, you don't want to outfit your fallout shelter in Formica.

The danger isn't in the Formica, but rather what the Formica is covering up: particle board. Turns out, particle board is made with formaldehyde, that fun stuff they use to soak brains and FEMA trailer in. While formaldehyde is good for preserving brains of dead people, it isn't such a good thing to breath in if you plan on staying alive.



According to National Geographic, the stuff can cause nausea, allergic reactions and a burning sensation in the eyes, nose and mouth. The EPA considers it a possible carcinogen. The National Cancer Institute has conducted studies linking exposure to increased risk of leukemia and brain cancer.

Formica, and the laminate stuff over your particle board (or press board) desk, chair, table, etc., acts as a partial barrier between you and the nasty stuff, except for all the exposed parts. Anyway, it's probably lurking behind your house walls.

That pretty much leaves us with solid hardwood from tropical forests and plastics, which were designed by Satan.

Protecting Your Children From Fire May Be Bad

The Wife is a philosophy professor. Her Dad is a more down-to-earth kind of guy. Of my wife's chosen career, he once said "Philosophy?! The cave men figured out all the philosophy we'll ever need: Fire good. No fire bad."

Turns out it's actually a little more complicated than that.

According to the Internet (actually, the National Fire Protection Association) in 2002 (the year with the lowest incidents ever recorded, mind you), children started almost 14,000 "structure fires" resulting in 210 deaths, 1,250 injuries, and $339 million in property damage ("that's coming out of your allowance!").

On the other side of the equation, companies have been dousing everything from clothing to couches to electronics with chemical fire retardants called PBDEs. The white coat activists at the Environmental Working Group conducted a study of 19 US families showing that in 19 of them, concentrations of the PBDEs were three times higher in the children and toddlers than in the mothers. The EWG had conducted an earlier study in 2003 and found that concentrations of PBDEs in US mothers' breast milk were 75 times higher than in breast milk from European mothers (the compounds are under much higher regulation in Europe). Although the studies are small, they are enough to cause great amounts of worry.

What's so bad about PBDEs? Apparently, when given to mice, they cause hyperactivity (and nobody wants hyperactive mice). The EWG recommends that until Congress enacts tough new regulations, children should really stay off the couch and stop using Daddy's computer.

With the NFPA's warnings in mind, I recently cautioned Cinderella not to play with matches. The conversation went exactly like this:

Cinderella: Daddy I need some matches.

Me: You shouldn't play with matches dear.

Cinderella: I'm not going to play with them! I need them to start a fire.

The First Rule of Toddler Fight Club is Don't Tell Your Mommy or Daddy

Today was Cinderella's first day of Pre-K. She's been going to all-day preschool since forever, so it was probably more of a big deal for me than for her. When the teacher was about to lead her away to the classroom Cinderella asked me if I could stay with her. I said no. Instead of crying, she just kissed my cheek and told me to have a good day at work (cue "Cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon..."). I could tell she liked it because she didn't want to leave when I came to pick her up.

The building is only a few years old, and only a couple of the people working at the school look like scary people who will try to boil my child into stew and eat her. Plus, since it's public, it's about half the cost of the private preschool we were sending her too.

My real relief is that we don't send her to this wonderful Methodist Church preschool in Fayetteville, Arkansas where two teachers recently lost their jobs because they were forcing 3 and 4-year olds to fight each other during "circle time."

Julie Munsell, spokesman for the state Department of Human Services, said the fighting is said to have involved punching, kicking and pushing as part of “a game,” and that the department is investigating under terms of the church’s child-care license.

The wrong kind of soap is bad. Very bad.

I thought I was getting ahead of the curve for once, but The Wife one-upped me.

It seems that a triclosan and triclocarban, common additives to hand soap, dish washing liquid, toothpaste and hundreds of other common household cleaners, has been linked to all sorts of scary stuff, including dermatitis, affect sex hormones (and not in a good way), interfere with the nervous system, possibly be a cause of autism, toxify your liver and inhalation system, and poses a danger to fetal and childhood development.

According to Dan Chang, PhD, "a professor of environmental engineering at U.C. Davis and one of the researchers involved, says he doesn't want to cause a panic, but ""the public should be aware of some of the concerns.""

Gee, that's reassuring.

Triclocarban and triclosan were initially used as antiseptic cleaners in hospitals in the 1950s and 60s. Freaked out germaphobes, helped along by articles like this, turned antibacterial soaps into multibillion dollar businesses starting in the 1990s. The claim by the EPA and the soap industry (what I like to call "Big Bubble") that the products are safe are based on testing done on animals in the 1960s and 70s, when testing standards were quite looser than they are today. But the old products got grandfathered in.

According to an article on WebMD, the UC Davis researchers suspect that any harmful effects from these agents are most likely to occur during pregnancy, in early childhood, and adolescence. You know, the times when everyone is always freaked about about washing hands and stuff.

The stuff also has a nasty habit of sticking around. White coat-types at Johns Hopkins have reported that 75% of triclocarban survives wastewater treatment plants and ends up in water used on food crops. found triclosan in the urine of 75% of people aged 6 and older.

In addition to all this, it's been widely reported that common use of antibacterial soaps are no better than regular soap, and are likely contributing to more drug resistant bacteria.

Okay. No antibacterial soap (although purell and the like are a different story).

The Environmental Working Group provides a handy mouse-over map of your home showing where triclosan may be lurking. Basically, it's in everything from soap to shoes to shower curtains. They suggest running naked through a hidden grotto drinking naturally purified rainwater and eating free range spores.

So, all of this had convinced me to start looking in horror at my bottle of cheapo dishsoap. It seemed like such a bargain at 98 cents! Okay, off to Trader Joe's to buy some human and earth friendly crap. Hey, here's a nice one: lavender scented. We used to calm Cinderella with lavender oil when she was a restless babe.

This is when the wife one-upped me.

Her: "Lavender? Are you out of your mind? Haven't you read about lavender????"

Me: "Ha ha! No. Is orange okay?"

Her: "Of course. What could be bad about orange?"

Me: "I'll be right back."

Turns out, some white coat types have discovered that lavender and tea tree oil have been found to cause young boys to develop breasts. Spurs estrogen growth or something. In a culture obsessed with boobs, pretty much everyone can agree that nobody wants them on prepubescent boys. Not sure what it does do 4 year old girls like mine, but we're not about to find out.

NY Times follows up on my Vitamin D story

The New York Times did a follow-up story to my earlier post about the dangers of too little vitamin D.

According to the Times, medical types have noticed an increase in the number of babies with problems they suspect are the result of too little vitamin D, including rickets, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and cancer.

Doctors suspect multiple causes, including exclusive breastfeeding (since the mothers are vitamin D deprived themselves), children drinking soda and juice instead of milk, and not enough time spent outdoors in the sun. Because we know that exposure to the sun will cause instant death, the recommended solution is to feed your baby vitamin supplements and cod liver oil.



But wait! According to Sydney Spiesel, a pediatrician and professor at Yale University School of Medicine, too much cod liver oil will actually do damage to your bones. Overdo the cod liver oil and you're likely to get too much vitamin A, which can lead to "liver damage to nervous-system symptoms that resemble the effects of a brain tumor," as well as bone mineral loss leading to osteoporosis.

Well, that certainly clears things up.

FDA Is Worried About Cough Syrup

The Food and Drug Administration is about to revise regulations on over-the-counter children's cough syrup. The FDA's review may even lead to the disappearance of the drugs from store shelves, making them available only via prescription.

The trouble, it seems, is twofold. First, the stuff doesn't work. Second, it may cause some unwanted side effects (which makes me wonder if you can call something a "side effect" if it doesn't actually have a primary effect...). Side effects include hallucinations (cool!), seizures (not cool), trouble breathing (very bad), heart problems (uh oh), and death (very not cool and very bad).

In response to an FDA-panel report back in October 2007, drug companies yanked all cough medicines for kids 2 and under off the shelves. The FDA let the companies keep selling the drugs for children older than that, however, despite the fact that the panel had determined that there was no evidence that the medicines actually worked.

The FDA had declined to stop the sale of the drugs, even though averse reactions to cough medicines led to over 7,000 ER visits, two-thirds of which involved children aged 2-5. The panel agreed that the drugs don't do any good for children age 6-11 either, but a majority of the panel members thought that parents "wouldn't have any good alternatives" (translation: It would be bad if drug companies would stop making money from this worthless and sometimes harmful product).

How were the companies able to push these harmful products for so long? It turns out that the drugs were first put on the market before proper drug testing was the norm, and then got grandfathered in. And then, hey, people were buying hundreds of millions of dollars of them a year, so what was the problem?

What's a worried dad (or mom) to do? Try a teaspoon of buckwheat honey (but not in children under 12 months as it may cause botulism in infants).

Toy Helicopters = Death

More toy helicopter tragedy.

First, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has put the kibosh on another toy helicopter because of exploding battery problems. The Chinese-made batteries in Hobbico Inc's Electrifly helicopter kits due to problems with the batteries melting, bursting into flames, and causing property damage.

On a sadder note, a six-year old boy was killed by a toy helicopter in the rural Brazilian city of Altinho in the state of Pernambuco. No word on what model it was, but let's face it, these things are just bad.

MSG Will Make You Fat

A new report by people in white coats suggests that MSG will make you fat. In a new report in the journal Obesity (you gotta wonder what they serve in their cafeteria), researches noted that Chinese peasants who ate a lot of MSG with their food were nearly three times as likely to be obese than those who didn't pour the stuff on (after controlling for calories, exercise, etc.).

So how am I supposed to get my umami fix now?

Here comes the sun. Hide your child now!

We recently discussed how people are dying nasty deaths because they can't manage to get 15 minutes of exposure to sunlight a day. Today we look at why you should be afraid to ever expose your child to the sun's harmful rays at all.

A helpful worry-inducing article from one of my favorite panic inducers, Parent's Magazine, provides many reasons to be afraid of the sun.

According to the article, "new research has found that overall sun exposure in childhood -- not just burns -- significantly increases the risk of skin cancer."

The author warns that normal approaches aren't going to protect your child. SPF 50 sunblock only works if you slather on a gallon of it, and reapply every time they even think about taking a swim.

Tans are bad: "We know now that the more sun your child gets, the more likely he or she is to develop basal-cell and squamous-cell skin cancers," says Dr. Eichenfield. "Any sign of color means that the skin has been damaged."

You can run, but you can't hide. Those harmful UVA rays will sneak in through closed windows and give us all cancer.

What to do?

Slather on the broad-spectrum sunscreen (remember when we used to call this "sun tan" lotion?).

Limit the time your kid spends in the sun during 10:00am and 4:00pm.

Make sure they wear a broad-brimmed hat, sun protective clothing, and sunglasses.

Hey kids, let's have a Burqa party!

Too little vitamin D will kill you

Something else to worry about.

According to a report by people in white coats, people with too little vitamin D in their bodies will die horrible, horrible deaths. In a study following 13,000 initially healthy men between 1994 and 2000, those with low levels of vitamin D were 26% more likely to die. Insufficient vitamin D was also linked to higher rates of breast cancer, depression in the elderly, and possibly to cardiovascular disease.

The somewhat shocking thing is that, according to the reports, all you need to get the required amount of vitamin D is to get 10-15 minutes of sunshine a day, however 50% of adults age 50 and over, and a large share of younger people, are under-D'd.

Too MUCH sleep can make you fat too!

For the moment, my big problem is that I can't get Cinderella to sleep early enough. And this could make her fat.

Now my sister, Worried Aunt, has informed me of research reported on WebMD that too much sleep is associated with a whole host of problems, including diabetes, headaches, back pain, depression, heart disease, and, of course, obesity.

One recent study showed that people who slept for nine or 10 hours every night were 21% more likely to become obese over a six-year period than were people who slept between seven and eight hours. This association between sleep and obesity remained the same even when food intake and exercise were taken into account.

So, the previous studies suggested that you were at risk for obesity if you slept less than 9 hours a night. This one says nine or more and you're in trouble too.

Gee, thanks Sis!

The Epidemic of Exploding Helicopters Continues Unabated

Another month, another recall of exploding toy helicopters. According to the CPSC, the "Sky Scrambler" and "Sharper Image" helicopters (made in Hong Kong by Innovage) join the ranks of the Sky Champion and the Thunder Wolf as toys recalled because they burst into flames.

Kind of makes me wonder what other toys might be really cool if they started exploding: Elmo's Inferno, Dora Explores the Inside of a Volcano, Burn Barney Burn!

Restaurant Food Isn't Good For Your Kid

Put this in the "hardly shocking, but still good to keep in mind" folder:

A new study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a report that showed that of the 13 largest restaurant chains, 93% of the possible kids' food combos contained a third of the total calories that kids 4-8 should consume in a day. Not too terrible in itself. However, for many of the places, though, almost all of the value-priced kids combos packed an entire days calories into a single meal.

The fast-food joints did about as poorly as you might expect (with the exception of Subway, mostly because they push milk instead of soda--ahhh!! milk!!!), but the big chains like Chili's and Denny's were some of the worst offenders. Many other chains don't make their nutrition info public.

We're bummed because one of our favorite neighborhood burrito joints, Boloco (with lots of cheap, fresh food on the menu), just closed the shop closest to our house. And, of course, it was the one location with a kids play area.

How are you supposed to feed your kid on the run without packing up half the fridge in your pack?

My inability to get my kid to sleep early will make her fat

My daughter, Cinderella, has so far been the victor in the ongoing bedtime battle. It doesn't help much that The Wife and I are night owls (actually, I'm a night owl, she's descended from vampires).

I'm not so good with the whole setting strict limits thing, for the most part. The family motto is "Put the [insert dangerous object] down and nobody gets hurt." Apparently, this isn't good enough to get me a fatherhood medal. It seems that my inability to turn Cinderella into Sleeping Beauty is dramatically increasing her chances of joining the national childhood obesity craze that's sweeping the nation.

Several studies by people in white coats from New Zealand and England point to what appears to be a clear link between the lack of sleep and the rise of childhood obesity. In one study, researchers following 13,000 children made the shocking discovery that children who sleep less tend to spend less time playing outdoors and have less energy for active play. More worryingly, they say that it appears that lack of sleep may alter children's hormones, leading them to overeat, and seek out the worst kinds of food.

Another smaller study of 591 children found that "children who slept an average of less than nine hours a night had a 3.34% increase in body fat compared with those who slept more than nine hours." The researchers noted that shortchanging your kid's sleep led to a three-fold increase in their risk of becoming obese, independent of the amount of exercise they got or the amount of television they watched.

Harshing my own mellow

[Author note: the following entry should be prefaced with the word "alledgedly."]

It has often been noted (by me, anyway) that the older we get, the more legal our vices become. With parenthood, a mortgage, and (oh the shame) a minivan, the last remnants of your youthful fantasies of carrying on your cool anti-establishment abandon go up in smoke. And it ain't the kind you spray over with your mom's air freshener either.

Now the drugs we take to make us happy are not only legal, they're pushed by the evil corporations that you once swore you'd never abide. While we once sought out the newest freak to free our mind from the drudgery we knew, deep down, was our unavoidable fate, we now cadge uppers and downers from our doctors in order to stay productive at work and keep pace in the soul-crushing rat race that sends digital money to our bank accounts so that we can transfer it to our credit card companies and bill collectors.

Yet, is there any better anti-drug ad than seeing a bunch of aging California hippies?

For some reason I'm often reminded of an old New Yorker cartoon. One guy says to another "The problem with living longer is that all the extra years come at the end, when you're old."

Are we worried enough?

A new report by some Israeli people in white coats has some interesting findings about worrying. Researchers claim that people in their 40s and 50s who worry a lot about their problems (at home and/or at work), had a significantly lower likelihood of dementia in their 80s. How much lower? How does 42% lower (than the care-free) grab you? The benefits were proportionately reduced the less you worried.

Great. Now I'm worried that if I don't worry too much I'm going to lose the bits of my mind that haven't been nuked by my cell phone.

Cell phones = death?

I was chatting with a friend the other day. I told her I wasn't getting good reception.

Her: "Your talking on a cell phone?!!!! I hope you're using one of those wireless sets."

Me: "Uh, oh."

I had stopped worrying about the whole cell phones cause brain cancer thing a while back when some pretty definitive sounding studies by people in white coats determined that there was no evidence of causation between cell phone use and brain tumors, brain cancer, or brain farts.

But now the world is abuzz with worry thanks to a memo from some guy to his staff warning them not to use their cellphones without those annoying earbud things because of the potential cancer risk. Turns out the guy, Ronald B. Herberman, is director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Okay, he couldn't get a job at Harvard, but it's still pretty official sounding.

According to the memo: "Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer," Dr. Ronald Herberman said in the memorandum. "Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use."

He says that children, especially, should have their exposure to cellphones limited because their brains are still developing.

I have to admit that the last bit makes me wonder if this whole thing isn't an elaborate ruse to get his kids to stop running up his cell phone bill...

Your Counter Top May Be Radioactive

Does your newly rehabbed kitchen have that special glow? Turns out it may be because it's radioactive!

You read it right. According to the New York Times, some people in white coats have declared that some granite counter tops are emitting radiation (including lung cancer causing radon) at 100 times background levels.

The paper reports that worried homeowners are spending $100-300 to test their kitchens for radon and other nasty stuff, and chucking the whole thing into the trash if the numbers are bad.

Fortunately, Worried Dad is not too worried, because we have plain old Formica tops that have not, as of this writing, been proven to cause cancer...

Big Elmo Is Watching You

A story in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (nicely clipped by Bronxnews) explains that the friendly companies that have filled our little ones' heads full of the sweet taste of desire for tv crapola like Dora the Explorer ("I'll teach your kids the same three words in Spanish every day!"), Elmo (please tell me Jim Henson wasn't responsible for this), Teletubbies (Falwell was right: Tinky Winky is gay), Thomas the Tank Engine (we miss you George), etc, are worried that you might hire someone to come to your kids birthday party pretending to be one of these creatures.

How worried are they? Worried enough to sue the pants of your entertainer. One owner of a kids' party shop received a friendly note from Marvel Inc, stating that they were aware of “unauthorized costumed Spider-Man, Hulk and Wolverine appearance services,” and added, “Marvel has no choice but to seek legal recourse against your business.” She has spent $30,000 defending herself in lawsuits.

In response to parental complaints that the companies create these insatiable desires in our kids only to deny them the chance to pretend that they actually get to meet the critters on their freaking birthdays, the companies respond that they can spend $50 a pop when they show up at huge arena shows. Gee thanks.

The companies won't even sell the costumes to entertainers, reportedly for fear that the characters image might be misused (but slapping it on a diaper is okay?). The performers have been reduced to dressing up like scary imitation characters like "Squishy Guy" instead of Sponge Bob.

One kid who wanted this girl



to show up at her birthday shrieked in terror when she was met by this girl


The horror. The horror.

Your wild youth messed up your kid's genes

How your kid turns out is a result of nurture and nature. As far as I've been concerned, Cinderella can blame me and the Wife for all our parental sins to the therapist, but she can't blame us for the genetic stuff. We put in all our chips and spun the wheel.

Or so I thought.

New research in the field known as epigenetics by people in white coats suggests that our behavior can affect our genes. The jury is still out, but the evidence is mounting that youthful indescretions can mark our kids and grandkids. Drowning your sorrows in Ben & Jerry's today means fat camp for junior tomorrow, and so on.

Rather unhelpfully, one study noted that the grandsons of men in an isolated Swedish village that had survived starvation during war lived longer than men who hadn't. Doesn't it always work out that way?

Germophobe? If not, this article can help

Another classic worry article from Parents Magazine: "Germ Warfare: How to Keep Your Kids Healthy." The gist of the article is that germs are everywhere, but you can fight back. The article helpfully notes that if you aren't afraid of your kitchen (sink, counter, refrigerator, cutting boards), bathroom (towels, sink, tub, toilet), supermarket, atm, elevator, pens, office, etc, then, (as Yoda once told Luke) "you will be ... you will be."

Some gems for those considering going over to the Mysophobia dark side:

• Using cashier pens: Pens provided to sign credit card purchases are "superb carriers of cold viruses," Dr. Schachter says, as are pens in doctors' offices and at the bank, and those offered by delivery people -- so carry your own!
  
• At the ATM and in the elevator: Press all buttons with a finger or knuckle that you're unlikely to use to touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Better yet, use a key on your key ring or a pen from your bag.
  
• Washing your hands: Unless the liquid hand soap in the public bathroom is in its own sealed bag (chances are it isn't), it's likely a breeding fiesta for bacteria. Rinse well with warm water and use your own hand sanitizer.

And finally "Avoid close contact with people who have the flu, advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Droplets in sneezes and coughs can travel up to 6 feet. "

Since it's so hard to detect if people have the flu before they get within six feet of you, it's just safer to just stick to a classic hoop skirt.

Broccoli Isn't As Good For You As It Used To Be

I'm not the best parent. My daughter, Cinderella, has the bedtime habits of a vampire. She watches too many movies, and cadges too many sweet treats. At restaurants she acts like a coked up hostess, flitting from table to table, rather than the prim and proper little girls that occupy every other table at every restaurant I've ever been to.

But I've gotten her to eat -- and like -- broccoli, damnit!

But now this. Research shows that broccoli, carrots, and all the other good-for-you fruit and veggie foods have less good stuff in them than they used to.

Since 1940, when people first started keeping track of this stuff, broccoli has lost 75% of its calcium, carrots 75% of their magnesium. There are other declines across the veggie and fruit spectrum. The most likely culprits are factory farming and plant breeding. Some guy in a white coat says we now have to eat more of the stuff to get the same nutritional boost. Gee, thanks. Can't we just inject all the missing nutrients into chocolate?

Low Fat and Skim Milk Does a Body Bad

Cinderalla wants a little sibling to kick around. This means that the Wife and I have to think about reproduction. Fertility = worry times 1 gazillion.

Turns out, according to people in white coats at Harvard, drinking less than full fat milk can reduce fertility. In an 8-year study of over 18,000 women between the ages of 24-42 (married, premenopausal with no history of infertility), those

who ate more than two portions a day of low fat dairy foods were 85 per cent more likely to be infertile due to ovulatory disorders than those who only ate it less than once a week.

Conversely they found that women who ate full-fat dairy foods, including ice cream, more than once per day had a 25 per cent reduced risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to those who ate full-fat dairy foods only once a week

The authors concluded that women trying to get pregnant should increase their intake of full-fat dairy, but keep their overall calorie intake the same. Good luck with that!

Other white coated people who couldn't get a job at Harvard have also done similarly huge studies of men and reported that men with diets heavy in low-fat dairy show a higher malignancy risk of prostate cancer compared with those who consume more full-fat dairy.

Kids Jewelry Is Still Bad

Remember the lead toy scare from a little while back? It doesn't get mentioned in the papers anymore, so I guess our friends at the CPSC have sorted it all out.


Uh oh. Perusing the CPSC recall list for July, we find the following (all made in China):

Bead Bazaar "It's a Girl Thing." "The jewelry features a variety of charms including flowers, shoes, letters and butterflies." Oh, and lead. Lots and lots of lead.

A nice little book by Parragon Books called The Magic Ballet Slippers comes with a necklace with a silver-colored chain with a silver-colored charm consisting of a pair of ballet shoes and a bow. And lead. Lots and lots of lead. Still for sale on Amazon -- I just posted a warning.

Action Products International puts out a neat series of craft kits for making shoelace and necklaces charms. "The craft kits contain components (i.e., charms, beads, wire, clasps) to assemble necklaces, jewelry accessories, or charms that can be hooked on shoelaces, backpacks, or used as zipper pulls." And lead. Lots and lots of lead. The kits are aptly named "Curiosity Kits," because, you know, curiosity killed the cat. With lead.

Kids Food Is Bad

According to a new study by a British scientific journal, 89% of food in supermarkets specifically targeted to kids have low or no nutritious value. To confront this, it appears that food marketers have decided to increase the number of dubious nutritional claims about their products. The investigators spotted a pizza carton labeled "Source of calcium" but made no mention that it was loaded with salt, and a jar of peanut butter mixed with chocolate was claimed to be a "source of six essential nutrients" (sure, peanut butter and chocolate, but what are the other four???).

Then again, the journal was called Obesity Reviews. I bet they say that about Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs too.

Worried in Mexico

I'm on vacation with Cinderella and the wife in Mexico. Vacations are a great time to get away from your everyday home worries and worry about some dangers you don't usually have to consider.

Things I've been worrying about while on vacation

• Jellyfish
  
  
• Sunburns
  
  
• Crazy drivers and bad roads
  
  
• Child drowning in swimming pool
  
  
• Child drowning while being sucked into the ocean undertow
  
  
• Contracting hemorrhagic dengue fever from mosquito bites
  

Things that I should have worried about (because they actually happened, or nearly did) but forgot to

• Pissing off Moctezuma and causing him to exact revenge (at least the horchata from that street vendor was yummy!)
  
  
• Forgetting to take my glasses off in the ocean and nearly losing them
  
  
• Child licking spilled chocolate milk off of a deck chair and potentially catching scary diseases from bat poop
  

Costco Helps You Prepare for the Worst

The friendly folks at Costco have come up with a solution to every worried parent's dilemma: what to eat during the coming Apocalypse?

The new Emergency Food Kit:

Basic preparation will impact the probability of your family’s survival in an emergency. Delicious and Easy to Prepare. Each bucket contains 275 servings of Pre-mixed and Pre-seasoned 100 % Vegetarian and Vitamin Fortified food for you and your family. With a 20 year long shelf life, this kit is perfect for the preparation of natural disasters such as hurricane, tornado, earthquakes or even a camping/hunting trip.

I guess some people are really bad at camping.

Gift packaging is available, but delivery takes 7-10 days, so please plan ahead at least a little bit...

Happy 4th of July! Try Not To Blow Yourself Up

Today we celebrate Independence Day, when a group of worried patriots dumped into the Boston harbor a shipment of tea that was suspected of causing a salmonella outbreak.

From our friends at the CPSC, I bring you a few heartwarming tales of pyrotechnics gone bad:

• A 32-year-old man was launching aerial fireworks from a platform on a driveway. The first round of the ten shot device went into the air, but then the device tipped over pointing the remaining fireworks at the people who were watching the display. The remaining fireworks were launched into the crowd. There were six people burned ranging in age from 4 to 32 years old.
  
• A 15-year-old male lit an M-80 inside his house and it exploded in his hand. The tips of two of his fingers were blown off.
  
• A 31-year-old man and his 32-year-old brother were involved in an explosion in an apartment complex. The victims were illegally manufacturing fireworks when the explosion occurred. The victims were reported to have purchased pyrotechnic components over the internet. One victim died six days after being admitted to the hospital and the other brother died two weeks after the incident.

Happy 4th!

Swimming Pools: Summer Fun or Cauldron of Death?

Summer heat means it's time to head for a relaxing dip in the pool. Not according to a worrying article from WebMD. The biggest dangers are recreational water illnesses (RWIs):

RWI refers to any illness or infection caused by organisms that contaminate water in pools, lakes, hot tubs, and oceans, resulting in diarrhea, skin rashes, swimmer's ear, and other conditions. And they are on the rise. The rate has more than doubled in the past 10 years, according to data from the CDC.

"No one who swims is safe from RWIs," says Alan Greene, MD, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., and author of several books including From First Kicks to First Steps.

Okay, but doesn't chlorine keep it clean?

Chlorine in properly disinfected pools kills most germs that can cause RWIs in less than an hour, but it takes longer to kill some germs, such as cryptosporidium, which can survive for days in even a properly disinfected pool.

What to do if you come down with one of these nasties? Antibiotics are the usual treatment, but the article notes that they are over-prescribed, leading to increased resistance to antibiotics. The article warns that avoiding the pool altogether isn't a good alternative, considering America's obesity epidemic.

Happy swimming!

Drug-Resistant Bacteria Can Kill You

Staph infections are on the rise. Antibiotics don't work on it. According to a very
worry-inducing article in Parents Magazine

In some cases, the germ can turn a tiny skin wound into a potentially life-threatening boil or abscess. In others, it morphs into a systemic infection that causes deadly forms of pneumonia, as well as muscle, bone, and joint disease. What's most alarming is the fact that this form of staph doesn't respond to commonly used antibiotics -- and it seems to be growing ever more virulent.

In a few years, MRSA has turned into the single most common identifiable cause of skin and soft-tissue infections in emergency rooms, reports the New England Journal of Medicine. One recent study, conducted in 11 cities, found that MRSA caused nearly 60 percent of skin infections treated in hospital emergency rooms.

Although the subhead at the top of the article claims that it will tell you how to "protect your child from this potentially deadly germ," it basically says that we're all doomed.

Beyond washing your hands a lot,

there's not much parents can do -- except get used to the many unanswered questions that still surround MRSA. Alyson Martin closely watches over baby Heather -- now 14 months old -- but she has come to terms with the fact that she'll probably never know how or why her infant contracted MRSA: "It's a mystery I'm just going to have to live with."

Overeating Is Easy

According to the NYT, a recent study showed that when junk food makers put their products in smaller packages, we are just inclined to eat more of it.

In one experiment, students were primed to think about their body shape, then were given potato chips and left to watch television. They ate nearly twice as many chips when given nine small bags as when given two large ones. They also hesitated less before opening the small bags.

I guess you might as well just get the big bag.

More Exploding Toy Helicopters

Another toy helicopter recall due to flaming batteries. The CPCS issued a recall for the "Sky Champion" helicopter distributed by Tradewinds International Enterprises (props for actually posting the recall on the website).

Maybe they should start marketing these with a SAM.

Toy Helicopters May Burst Into Flames

According to the CPSC, the “Thunder Wolf” Remote Controlled Indoor Helicopters, sold by Westminster Inc, are prone to overheating, melting, and bursting into flames. They have been recalled.

Actually, this sounds pretty cool.

Oddly, while they are listed as being manufactured in China, only the helicopters not labeled "Made in China" are subject to the recall.