Celery will kill you

Worried Dad's daughter, Cinderella, has long contended that she is allergic to vegetables. Turns out she might be right.

Back in March, the Environmental Working Group declared that conventionally grown (i.e. NOT organic) celery topped their supermarket "dirty dozen." This means that with every bite of those crunchy green stalks, you are walking a chemical-laden path to a cancerous pesticide induced death.

Now, killer celery has claimed multiple victims in Texas: the count so far is 4 dead and two more sick. But the numbers are sure to rise. The culprit this time is listeriosis, a nasty little bacterium.

Okay kid, you can have a side of chocolate tonight.

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."

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.