How Dangerous Is Your Couch? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#151

Post by GFKjunior » Sun, Sep 09, 2012, 5:24 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #50

nostromo wrote: post #31

Looking at mattresses without flame-retardent led me to this provider: http://www.whitelotus.net/green-cotton-rx/ Turns out you'll need a doctor's prescription to even order a plain cotton mattress. Yet another perfectly reasonable regulation from our friends in the California Legislature! :) My least-favorite CA regulation has to do with eye-glasses. I lost my only pair and went in to get a replacement on a Saturday…

Are there any states that don't have a requirement of a current prescription to purchase glasses? I've had the same issue in Texas [1], which usually considers itself small-government. [1] cf. http://www.tob.state.tx.us/tobrx.htm

Texas is hardly small government.

I would call them more right-wing conservatives (neo-cons really).

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#152

Post by nvarsj » Sun, Sep 09, 2012, 6:44 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #31

Looking at mattresses without flame-retardent led me to this provider: http://www.whitelotus.net/green-cotton-rx/ Turns out you'll need a doctor's prescription to even order a plain cotton mattress. Yet another perfectly reasonable regulation from our friends in the California Legislature! :) My least-favorite CA regulation has to do with eye-glasses. I lost my only pair and went in to get a replacement on a Saturday…

> Turns out you'll need a doctor's prescription to even order a plain cotton mattress.

Alternatively, you can order one of the cotton/latex/wool mattresses that don't have any flame retardents. The most popular is Naturepedic. However, such a mattress will set you back $2200 for the most basic queen.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#153

Post by reirob » Sun, Sep 09, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

When reading the title I thought the article will be about how dangerous the couch is for our generation, because we are spending more and more time on it and so do not exercise enough our body, etc. You know, related to Tablet devices and Internet which allow more and more entertainment from the couch.

Was quite surprised it is about another type of danger. I guess I am too much on portable devices and on the couch ;)

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#154

Post by jtheory » Sun, Sep 09, 2012, 9:55 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #147

rdl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of tangentially, down is one of the few products where the "humane" way to harvest involves killing the animal; the "pluck living geese over and over again" method is apparently quite painful for them.

Wool is also hard to burn (apparently) and sheep don't need to be killed to shear them. Not sure how humane it is. (Better than milk, eggs, leather, etc.)

I've been to sheep-shearings - as long as the sheep is regularly sheared, it'll know what's going on and won't be upset; it's not painful (as long as the person with the trimmer is expert enough not to nick the skin), and the wool starts peeling off in chunks anyway if you don't shear it during the summer.

Caveat: I have no idea if there's some horrible mechanized way to shear sheep at greater scale. But on the smaller scale the most efficient way is to keep the sheep calm and cooperative. The cheapest way to keep large numbers of sheep also seems to be to let them wander over a large area of cheap land (rocky, steep, uneven, etc. -- unusable for cow grazing or farming is just fine). On the Isle of Skye in Scotland there are simply sheep wandering everywhere, often in the roads, as the sheep farmers don't always bother with much fencing.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#155

Post by malyk » Mon, Sep 10, 2012, 2:07 AM UTC

lusr wrote: post #142

tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know that anyone has contracted cancer as a result of flame retardants used in furniture? I re-read the article looking for clear evidence, and what I saw on close read was weasel-wording: when direct health effects are being talked about, the subject of the sentence becomes "flame retardants" rather than a specific chemical; when lax investigations become a topic, it's the EPA's laxity (the EPA isn't solely re…

1. Cancer: does it matter whether it's cancer or something else? Surely the criteria here is "harm" not "cancer". 2. "Flame retardant" vs. "specific chemical": the article specifically cited recent research regarding PBDEs, why did you not consider this valid evidence? "Researchers from the Center for Children’s Environmental Health, at Columbia University, measured a class of flame retardants known as polybrominated…

Re point 3.

The article mentions a letter from Chemtura saying that there were 1400 deaths from furniture fires in 1980 and only 600 in 2004.

So what that actually means is we've saved 800 or less lives a year for the past 3 decades while exposing basically the entire nation (and presumably a lot of non-nationals with exports) to a whole host of chemicals that we don't know the effect of because the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act declares that all substances are to be presumed safe.

I can't begin to understand how in the universe it is acceptable to subject everyone to "shit thrown together in a lab" and just assuming it's safe. It's unbelievable how often the USA makes laws like that. I presume because "regulation" is "bad for business"...regardless whether the products of business are killing people (albeit somewhat slowly in this case).

It just doesn't make sense.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#156

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Sep 10, 2012, 10:31 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #93

Retric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't backtrack a specific cancer to a specific source. Skin cancer and lung cancer have famous "causes" but there statistical in nature with some people getting skin cancer despite minimal exposure to sunlight. Expose a billion people to low doses of a well known carcinogen and you expect a statistical increase in cancers, but there only estimates and it's impossible to track down specific people affected.

Is there statistical evidence of any sort correlating an increase in the specific kinds of cancer attributed to chlorinated tris to the phase-in of flameproofing in upholstered furniture? The chronic carcinogenicity data for chlorinated tris is specific.

The question at the end of the day though is when we are going to pass regulation that a set of chemicals must be used who has the burden of proof to show that this is a safety gain? I think that the regulator has that burden, and if you have a sort of revolving door of chemicals used there (use it for a time throw it out because of health problems, move on to the next without testing) then you know you have a problem.

I know that this is hard, and it means effectively if there is such a burden of proof patents will expire long before it is met, but it's time to stop that cycle.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#157

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Sep 10, 2012, 10:35 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #96

tsotha wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't count if you die in a fire, either. The reality is with this kind of thing we're really off into rounding errors. To the extent you can affect your odds of getting cancer, the extent to which you do the things your mother told you to do (don't smoke, don't drink, eat your vegetables, and don't get too fat) swamps your cancer risk from environmental sources.

Just don't eat broccoli. Broccoli contains mutagens. http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Genotoxicity-studies-organic...

I thought the connection to Bruce Ames was interesting. I remember reading Ames' discussion of carcinogens in foods and realizing that by the standards he was measuring, everything would give us cancer and the only thing we could do was ignore all that.

I do think that regulations mandating the use of new chemicals without decades of health testing is pretty irresponsible though.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#158

Post by greedo » Mon, Sep 10, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #144

DanBC wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately sometimes smart people believe dumb things, and Dr. Sprott is one of these people. When you read the reasons why his "research" has been ignored you hear things like "vested interest", "cover up", and "politics". Dr. T.J Sprott has a book, and several products for sale. His "statistic" is bogus; the NZ authorities stopped recommending mattress wrapping in the 90s; he has no idea if babies slept or died…

Well, from what I've read the book and the products came substantially after he started voicing his concerns, which sort of implies that he might've taken the matter in his own hands since no one would listen to him. Even assuming he is a complete loon, the theory of an environmental cause is actually quite plausible. Perhaps not fungus, not phosphorus, but something in the bedding that just knocks those kids out. Wi…

Yes (speaking as a parent), parents are idiots. We're expected to raise children without a real guide except our own life experience, flawed as that is. We are continually bombarded with media that expects parenting to look one way, while reality is far different. The scientific method doesn't work for parents; we generally try ad hoc procedures that reinforce our confirmation biases.

Yes, parents are idiots. It's a testament to the resiliency of children that any make it to puberty.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#159

Post by dromidas » Mon, Sep 10, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

>The baby’s mother had placed a candle in her crib, he said, and the candle fell over, igniting a pillow.

I'm pretty sure the baby's mother didn't deserve to be the mother of anyone. Either that or she spent too much time sniffing her own couch and it lowered her IQ enough to put a CANDLE IN A FREAKING CRIB WITH A BABY.