When I was taking organic chemistry my (mid-to-late 60s at the time in ~20010) teacher told us an anecdote about benzene when we started learning about aromatic molecules. She told us that they used to clean their lab bench with benzene solvent to make it sparkling clean. Of course, she also told us it was carcinogenic and then finished by saying a lot of her contemporary colleagues that went into organic chemistry research were now dead. Really drives home that a lot of safety precautions and practices are "written in blood", so to speak.
Chemists used to basically bathe in Benzene back in the day. I’ve heard that they as a group tended to die in their 60’s. Most teaching Chem labs tend to work with small amounts of chemicals today and try to avoid the nasty stuff if possible.
When I went to Belgium I visited
the Red Star Line museum The Red Star Line was a passenger ship company that brought millions of immigrants from Europe to the US in the early 20th century. In order to depart for the US, passengers were required to scrub themswlves down with benzene and let it soak in to kill any potential lice eggs.
Also their luggage was autoclaved (yep, with hot stean) and then drenched in disinfectant.
Benzene, C6H6 and Zyklon B (aka HCN) are very different chemicals and I'm not advocating HCN as a delousing agent. The difference is that the body copes with small amounts of HCN very well as small amounts can be naturally found in food whereas C6H6, an aromatic hydrocarbon, isn't. C6H6 does damage in an altogether different way and its effects are cumulative.
Incidentally, as I've mentioned in an earlier post I've always been very careful to avoid exposing myself to C6H6, but less so to HCN. I used to use HCN in photographic processing and as I mentioned once before on HN I was affected by its fumes—and I'm still here to mention the fact (but I'm not for a moment suggesting that people be lax when using the stuff).
Chemistry used to be a scientific spin on the Jackass franchise. Although to be fair often it was the assistants doing the taste tests - not the chief chemist at the lab.
"She told us that they used to clean their lab bench with benzene solvent to make it sparkling clean. Of course, she also told us it was carcinogenic and then finished by saying a lot of her contemporary"
That was about the same time I was learning the subject. We didn't get an anecdote about cleaning lab benches with benzene but were told it was very dangerous and carcinogenic.
Our teacher brought out a little bottle of the stuff—about 50ml or so—and told us that this was one aromatic hydrocarbon we weren't going to sniff and we should never attempt to do so. He also went on to stress that carbon tetrachloride was nearly as bad and said that none of the methyl chlorides could be 'trusted' as safe and with every extra Cl atom they became more toxic.
Advice I've always heeded. If this was common advice in lab science 50+ years ago then why is it even an issue today? All our chemical tech should have been built around this knowledge, the default should have been that benzene and humans should not mix—this paper ought to be a hypothetical as such exposure should not happen.
Incidentally, around that time there was controversy about removing carbon tetrachloride from dry cleaners, owners of these operations were complaining the new substitutes didn't remove grease as well.
>If this was common advice in lab science 50+ years ago then why is it even an issue today?
[...]
>this paper ought to be a hypothetical as such exposure should not happen.
Of course it shouldn't happen. We all wish bad things didn't happen...
I am having trouble wrapping my head around this comment. I don't think people are purposefully exposing themselves to the chemical... Like yeah, of course everyone hopes that they won't need to know what happens when someone is exposed to benzene, but that doesn't mean we don't study it anyway. I don't think "hypothetical" is the word here since the possibility of benzene exposure is very real.
The implication here seems to be that, as soon as you discover the negative effects of exposure to a certain chemical, that chemical is instantly no longer a threat to anybody. Just because we may have known about this ~50 years ago, doesn't mean that we can just stop worrying about it.
I'm sorry you missed my point that regulation lags the tech and can do so for a very long time—usually because commercial and vested interests block safety regulations.
Where would you like me to start? Perhaps asbestos, it's well known and well documented. 2000+ years ago the Romans were well aware of its dangers and called is effects 'the wasting disease', that's why they only sent slaves and prisoners to asbestos mines.
It was then the subject of several Admiralty inquiries in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that came to the conclusion that it was dangerous and significantly shortened lives but the reports were overlooked as those lagging pipes on ships were expendable, getting ships ready for war wasn't. And we are still dealing with the stuff 100+ years on.
We could end with the dangers of social media and AI, but the populous at large is so enamored with them it can't even yet see the dangers let alone consider regulating them.
Well I'm not sure that's the point I would have taken away from your comment, but oh well...
What it comes down to (which is what it always comes down to in capitalism), is capital. Accruing (and facilitating the accrual of) and protecting capital is the main function of the state, so it's only natural that regulations to protect regular people at the cost of a fraction of profits of the bourgeoisie, would take decades to be put in place. If ever.
Same thing goes for social media and AI. We sit back and watch as it corrodes and destroys our societies, so a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations can report profits to their shareholders every quarter.
This isn't anything new, there are people way smarter than you and I that figured this out a long time ago... Just don't say his name or else nobody will take you seriously.
Right, that hairy unmentionable and his mate. It's not surprising that 'those in charge of the means of production' and a fucked revolution in the hands of ruthless opportunists have made their names mud.
What truly grates me in this centuries-long battle is that those to whom you refer always end up on top. Capital is like a bobbing cork, no matter how far you sink it, it always has the power to resurface.
In general if you drink decaffeinated coffee I'd check how it's decaffeinated. Even newer processes that use dichloromethane, ethyl acetate or triglycerides are dicey imho. The supercritical CO2 processes seem safe though.
Truth be told I'd encourage anyone drinking decaf to really think about the benefits here.
Wow. I knew decaffeination using dichloromethane (aka methylene chloride) was once a thing prior to the popularization of industrial scale supercritical CO2 but I had no idea benzene was ever employed.
When I was in high school there was this bottle with Mercury floating in it.
We would put it in our hands and mess with it. Mercury has this viscous texture and breaks up and coagulates.
Only later did I find out how toxic it is.
My parents literally rubbed mercury into their open wounds as children in the 60s. Mercurochrome was a tremendously popular antiseptic, and wasn't banned in the USA until 1998.
Back in the day, I worked at a print shop as a press operator for AB-Dick 360CD printing presses.
We'd clean the ink off the rollers between separations with benzene. We didn't have any special ventilation (or even use gloves, for that matter). The first few times you did it, you'd get quite a headrush.
It's 40 years on, now, and I haven't yet experienced any health effects that I can directly link to that exposure. I'm sure I'm dumber than I would have been had I avoided the exposure, although I also grew up in the era of leaded gasoline. Based on what I've read, I'm more likely to experience Parkinson's, anemia, and various cancers in the future.
My mother was a typesetter, and either worked at or leased space from printing companies for years. She also had major health problems for most of her life. I've often wondered if the whole cascade of medical problems started with exposure to the many nasty chemicals used in that industry.
Benzene is everywhere, particularly in trace amounts in otherwise harmless products.
Benzene is a building block for the production of many chemicals, including plastics, synthetic fibers, rubber, resins, dyes and pharmaceuticals, and residual amounts may remain in the final products.
Benzene is used as a solvent and cleaning agent in printing, paint manufacturing, electronics, etc. Benzene contributes to the overall VOC load of paint for example.
And benzene is in the formulation of adhesives and sealants. Regulations often restrict the amount of benzene to a certain amount
perhaps as a society we need to stop dismissing things containing plastics, synthetic fibres, rubber, resins, dyes and pharmaceuticals as otherwise harmless. I personally strongly avoid sleeping on or wearing anything containing synthetic fibres unless absolutely necessary. dyes I'm less cautious about, as short of dressing like a hippy they're almost impossible to avoid.
it would be worse if I was a woman I'm sure, god knows what nonsense cosmetics contain
During the pandemic, I took a dive down the skincare ingredients rabbit hole. Some of the shit we‘re sold is crazy. Fragrances are another thing to get worked up about too. The most shocking to me was the lack of regulations.
> I personally strongly avoid sleeping on or wearing anything containing synthetic fibres unless absolutely necessary.
What's your pillow stuffed with? You mattress? What's your carpet made of? Have anything plastic in the house that might off-gas? You know what aluminum cans are coated with? What's your furniture made of? Is there epoxy in that? What it finished with polyurethane?
Things like lead, benzene, and DDT proved themselves to be dangerous pretty quickly. Your polyester suit should be the least of your worries.
I try not to worry myself too much about these things, in the same way I don't constantly immerse myself in politics. within a busy life, clothes, bedsheets and pillows are easy and effective targets to eliminate
as I understand it, cancer is essentially DNA damage. a piece of DNA gets randomly rewritten so that instead of doing its normal job it replicates and grows, using up resources and killing off neighbouring cells until it gets to the point where it prevents the organ/system/host from functioning
it's a little like a computer memory leak caused by a bit flip
cotton, silk, linen and wool are all harvested from organisms that contain DNA. if they promoted DNA damage, the organisms that produce them likely would have died off and been selected out long ago
of course humans could be vulnerable in ways plants, worms and sheep are not, or the damage could be slow enough to only affect something with a human-length lifespan, but there's a level of reassurance in knowing that those fibres come from something containing DNA
hydrocarbon-based fibres do not give me this reassurance
thank you for this comment, by the way. it forced me to question my thoughts and really helped me to a better understanding: a natural product is produced from something that has dna. obviously this isn't the original intention of the word natural, but it's an extremely useful explanation for an instinct, and your comment forced me to it
That's startlingly naive. There are breathtaking double standards as applies to women.
One of my friends is a graphic designer / coder working at a web-dev shop. Guys could come in wearing ripped jeans, hoodies, whatever. If she came in with low makeup and casual clothes she was upbraided for not "looking good" in case a client came in.
It's by no means an uncommon incident. It's 2023, there's still a lot of discrimination and inequality. Women choosing to not wear makeup probably don't get jobs and contracts.
Societal pressure and beauty standards for women are far different than for men. I agree that they could always just "not apply them", but look at tabloids showing things like "star unrecognizable without makeup" and memes where men are encouraged to take women swimming on a date so they can see what they look like without makeup. It's just not that easy
Backwards thinking like your comment is a source of injustice, not a defense against it.
What's your point... bad people impose values on others except when I do it too then I'm insightful?
Currently chemical analysis techniques can detect compounds down to picograms/L. That's billionth's of grams per liter. So saying "this material has benzene in it", doesn't really tell you anything about the level of exposure or risk.
Very few compounds are toxic at that kind of exposure.
A lot of chemicals seem to have effects on the endocrine system. I wonder if there is potentially an issue with them in aggregate. Such that the dose of any single chemical isn't problematic but all of them together with similar effects causes a problem.
>I wonder if there is potentially an issue with them in aggregate. Such that the dose of any single chemical isn't problematic but all of them together with similar effects causes a problem.
I've been wondering about this a lot in recent years.
Particularly in regards to medications/pharmaceuticals but also environmental containments/traces (which can include pharmaceuticals of course), pair with this what we are just starting to understand about plastics exposure and pervasiveness and I really wonder why more health research and workplace safety resources aren't being directed to look at compound and long term exposures.
> I really wonder why more health research and workplace safety resources aren't being directed to look at compound and long term exposures.
Probably because no one wants to find the various smoking guns alongside the fears of what each of the ensuing lawsuits would cost. Ignorance is bliss as they say.
That would require some interaction between the chemicals, that potentiates their effect. Or they act through common pathways.
But if the threshold effect is 1 microgram, and you're exposed to 1 picogram of 10 different chemicals all working through the same pathway, you're still below the threshold effect.
If you read carefully through the study, the lowest dose does not show anything close to maximum effect in several of the most interesting metrics they were testing (shrinking of white adipose tissue cells, serum levels of leptin indicating endocrine dysfunction). Basically they tested a ton of stuff, and actually selected a pretty good range to get a decent picture. If they wanted to zoom on on one of these, then maybe you are right they should have started at 0.1mg/kg... unless they were zooming on on say decrease in serum levels of leptins in response to benzene exposure, because no significant decrease would be found.
Also, they are obviously interested in lifetime exposure, but the expense of exposing rats to tiny amounts over the course of years is not financially/logistically feasible, unless someone is dumping obscene amounts of money into this specific avenue of research. Instead, they go with much higher doses in 24 exposures over a 4 week period.
Yes but "the dose makes the poison". Unless you're showing direct cumulative, irreparable damage, then it is not possible to extrapolate by poisoning something with a large amount of chemical that the small amount is just as bad.
Pure water - i.e. Milli-Q ultrapure water - is in fact a toxin in moderate quantities due to osmotic effects.
Benzene is in sunscreen... at least some of the spray stuff. Apparently it doesn't get on your skin but it's important to apply it in a well ventilated area to make sure you don't breathe any of it.
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it is a big enough concern to recommend safety equipment in exposure at or above 0.1 ppm. So most of the activities / sources on that diagram don't warrant too much concern, other than cigarette smoking and fresh pain fumes.
Although benzene exposure from cosmetics probably depends highly on what you are using. As per another reply here, those spray on sunscreens are are pretty terrible (likely due to using butane, propane, etc as propellants). Exposure can get as high as 6 ppm in some cases.
May please provide another source rather than an image with the cutout of a house and showing the parts per million of benzene versus the actual personal care products you were talking about that contain benzene?
Also, benzene is a common contaminant and breakdown product of chemical sunscreen (as opposed to mineral sunblock) ingredients. I.e. the older the tube of sunscreen is, the more benzene and other undesirable by products it’s likely to have.
Things i wish i knew before buying a fixer upper car is all the chemicals involved. Just one sniff of the brake cleaner and the rest of the day is gone. Probably some IQ ponis down the drain too. Should've just bought a tesla and be done with it...
The more I read these posts the more alarmed I become. As I posted above only minutes ago I was taught the dangers of benzene over 50 years ago to the extent that there were strict controls on how we used it—we weren't allowed to even take the stopper of the bottle unless it was in a fume cupboard.
Sorry. Think you are correct. I read word 'harmless' and associated it with entire comment indicating 'harmless'. But on closer reading, it could be as you say, and it is not trying to excuse it.
the same thing is true of brominated fire retardants. Somewhere along the way it was decided flameproofing was necessary for consumer products. As a result, we all get a free does of bromine in our homes!
That article says that BFRs only account for 20% of the flame retardant market, and the vast majority of that goes into printed circuit boards and electrical components.
There's no reference for that section, and I wonder if that calculation is by value, rather than by volume or weight, which would rather massively skew the calculation. Poisons don't usually care how much you paid for them.
> For smokers, tobacco smoke is the most important source of exposure to benzene. It is released in the smoke when tobacco is burned. Non-smokers are also exposed through tobacco smoke when they inhale smoke passively. A typical smoker inhales an average of ten times more benzene per day than a non-smoker.
Crazy how people just drive around in cars and fuel up with gasoline that contains like 2% benzene. And we let teenagers do this, with no personal protective equipment and no basic supervision.
To nitpick, at least in the EU regulations limit the benzene content in gasoline to a maximum of 1%. I had a vague recollection the limit was actually slightly stricter in the USA at 0.6%, but maybe my memory fails me.
No, 0.62% is the average: Benzene content in gasoline is federally regulated, with any refineries or importers required to average less than or equal to 0.62% benzene by volume.”
The very next sentence in your link mentions it can have up to 2%, as I mentioned:
“Generally, gasoline in the United States is likely to contain 0.5%–2.0% benzene by volume [14,15].”
Interesting that the regulations are done that way in terms of both an average and a maximum. I wonder how the average is determined, how many samples, and what is the size of a batch etc.?
> This may be done depending on the season to increase the octane of gasoline.
> An average of 18% of these aromatics is not what I’d call just trace amounts…
Yes, BTEX is added to improve octane. It's also possible to increase octane by alkylation and isomerization, which produce branched alkanes which tend to be less toxic and burn cleaner than aromatics, but reformation/dehydrogenation which produces aromatics is cheaper..
But yes, while the other aromatics aren't exactly healthy, they're nowhere as dangerous as benzene. So it makes sense to minimize the amount of benzene via regulation, but be a bit less strict about the other aromatics.
As an aside, a quick glance on that "fuelfreedom.org" site suggests they really like ethanol as a fuel additive, which makes me suspect they might be a front group for the corn ethanol lobby. So I'd be wary of taking what they say at face value.
I guess you are referring to stage 2 recovery systems on pump handles which are not uniformly required. As per usual, the US is large and regulations are often bare minimums with different states implementing different interpretations or additional requirements.
At least in the US, vapor recovery seems to be implemented differently by state. In California I notice fumes when pumping gas far less than in New York. There seems to be various types of nozzles and legislation (some with rubber boots and some without). Since 2006 cars were apparently required to have vapor recovery systems built in, so the EPA has dropped requirements for systems at the pump. California (not surprisingly) still seems to lead the way in improving the effectiveness of the systems despite the EPA backing off.
Yea I was just thinking the other day how I haven’t actually smelled gas in a long time. I used to love the smell as a kid, but I’m happy it doesn’t seem like my children will get the same exposure.
Good god, it seems like y'all dropped the requirement for Stage 2 vapor recovery systems in 2011 [1] based on the pretense of onboard filters in vehicles being enough... meanwhile here in the EU, where many member countries already had national requirements for years prior to that, we passed that requirement in 2009 [2].
The US attitude, particular to expensive systems, on anything emissions related continues to negatively amaze me.
I'm sure it was a combination of not wanting to spend money and customers feeling the new pumps with vapor recovery systems were too difficult to operate and so sought out stations that hadn't yet upgraded.
My father (and me) washed engine parts with gasoline. And occasionally degreased our hands (followed by dish soap and sugar). We practically bathed in the stuff.
Then my father discovered Goop.
My father also dumped engine oil into storm drains. Then into the ground when that was banned. Yes, he was an idiot. (Becoming a treehugger was probably an act of rebellion.)
Not only does gasoline contain toxic components, it's also incredibly flammable. While using gasoline as a degreaser was a common practice, it's a pretty dangerous habit. Not to mention back when leaded gasoline was a thing, it left a shimmering effect on your hands after the gasoline evaporated. Fun times. Diesel is a lot safer.
For cleaning bike gears etc. I've used a DIY degreaser with water, fuel alcohol, baking soda, and dishwashing liquid. Works ok, and is cheap.
My father used to change the car oil on the lawn rather than the driveway. He would do this less than 100 ft from the well that supplied our drinking water. At some point he stopped but it certainly lasted through multiple vehicles.
Bought a new house in a semi-rural area, had only ever been farms, zero petrol stations ever existed within at least a 4-mile radius, and mostly downhill.
Yet the water test found MTBE [0], Methyl tert-butyl ether, a gasoline additive.
Had to maintain and replace an activated carbon filter in the water system ever since.
The only possibility is some farmer decades ago dumping oil (IDK if it is in there, or gets in there from piston-ring blow-by) or leaking gasoline somewhere in the watershed.
How deep are your wells there? It seems difficult for serious contamination to happen where I live outside of an poorly maintained well letting surface water down.
My well is 528 feet deep, and freshly drilled - this pollutant was in the first water test set and in every test set since for 15+ years, and there has been zero spills and good maintenance ever since.
I agree that in this situation it seems very difficult and it is surprising that the pollutant would travel not only that far laterally but also that far down. Yet, there it is.
"Water flowing underground ...." - it moves a lot more than we think!
Contamination of watersheds is easy - depending on which source you believe, a single drop can contaminate 100 to 600 liters of water. A single cigarette butt can contaminate 500 liters.
And once the stuff is in the watershed/groundwater, it can be really really hard to get out of there, especially if the watershed is enclosed or doesn't have much outflow.
I don't doubt your experience, but I'd rather put that one on abysmal lax standards in the US... here in Germany, myself and a couple of friends I just asked never have witnessed such a thing outside of freak accidents where someone knocked over a jerry can.
I believe the standard here is to change the handle once enough people complain about it splashing them. That was the case for the faulty handle that splashed me.
Can also say the same thing how teens can drive moving things that can blow up, crash, cause loss of limb and life... and untold amounts in property damage.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s my elderly Italian-speaking grandfather lived with us in the states.
Whenever he'd watch driving my gas RC car, if the thing would die he'd motion with his thumb down (like a pouring spout) while saying "benzene?".
I don't know if it's an Italian language thing, his dialect, or just his knowledge of engines, but RC car fuel was "benzene". Makes me wonder what kind of benzene exposure he had in his younger days...
I believe you, (and google translate agrees). But I just never heard it spoken outside those specific circumstances from him. Despite having Italian immigrant parents who spoke a lot of Italian around me. I can't remember but suspect they said gasolina, not benzina.
Benzene's wide-ranging negative health effects have been known for a long time. It's far from clear why this article reporting the results of a mouse study with rather unremarkable findings is on the front page.
HN makes much more sense if you think of it as a collection of chat rooms with titles. People are upvoting the topic and discussing benzene, mostly unconnected to the actual article. (Serious question: did anyone who upvoted the post read the article first?)
I thought it was related to a discussion on HN last week about an article that discussed the unreported and untracked levels of benzene in hand sanitiser, after regulations were eased during Covid.
I and family was expose to very large amounts of benzene from a gas leak over the course of three months. It was a rental house came with that smell, and they kept making excuses as to why it had a weird smell.
It’s taken about five years to get something resembling normal health.
Intelligence of all family members dropped like crazy. Blood started clotting a lot. Nerve pain and inflammation were the norm.
Doctors didn’t know what effect those chemicals would have so refused to sign any paperwork saying it was cause of all health problems. So lawyers wouldn’t take the case.
Only in the past year can me and my oldest daughter start having normal conversations like we used to.
I had aplastic anemia as a kid. (Fixed with a bone marrow transplant.) I previously had a summer job cleaning a small PCB mfg (1983). It was fucking awful. I read that company was later fined for improper use, storage, and disposal.
Can't prove cause & effect, of course. But childhood aplastic anemia is pretty rare in my area (vs agricultural areas). So it's plausible.
DNP doesn't actually target fat that I am aware of. It messes with ATP and makes it incredibly inefficient, so your cells burn basically everything including fat to try and keep up with energy demands. This also can kill you due to the heat produced.
I took a standard DNP fat loss dose, the effects (weight loss and others) are vastly overstated. You'd have to take well in excess of any recommended dose to get to the point where the waste heat production would become dangerous. You're more likely to develop a cataract as a deleterious effect.
I'd wager most of my weight loss came from the fact that I just wasn't eating because I felt awful.
According to wikipedia, the actual tolerance of the dose varies widely. Because of this I would strongly discount individual accounts of safe experiences.
Sure, although I guess to be clear I wouldn't recommend DNP to anyone because it's absolutely not the miracle weight loss drug it seems to be when you read about it on the internet.
what else did you expect to happen? The only place I can see it wouldn't be a problem would be in the arctic or antarctic. Air temperature is so low you might not have any issues.
It also lowers serum leptin levels, which the body can interpret as "I'm starving" and send some strong signals to binge on food and stop moving around so much.
This topic was recently brought to attention by David Friedberg in the latest episode of the All-In podcast. https://youtu.be/5cQXjboJwg0?t=6645 (1:50:45)
There's something super dystopian that we look at a cancer-causing, bone-marrow-killing chemical and go "look, we can use this for weight loss!". I get fatness is a plague or whatever but thin == healthy is totally broken if you're using poison to get thin.
I remember reading that body builders and models will take this. It basically causes your mitochondria to work less efficiently, and thus burn more calories. Take too much and you will die because your body can't regulate it's temperature. Scary stuff.
"Available" is a generous word. It's actually pretty hard to find even from underground anabolic steroid sellers. The only reason I was able to get my hands on it was because a seller was getting rid of his stock. The main reason is that it's actually pretty crummy for fat loss. If you actually want to lose weight you'd probably be pointed to a low dose of hgh, which has a ton of other benefits to help you lose fat.
I agree with your opinion, but the other way to look at it is that most fat people know they are fat, "want" to do something about it, but just don't because losing weight is really hard, from a human level. Millions of years of evolution are working against you to lose fat stores, because 99.99% of people who have ever done that starved to death.
If sketchy drugs are the only ACTUAL way to get the 3/4ths of the country to lose weight and be healthier, shouldn't we try it?
Though, the end result of that is probably finding out that if you are a "healthy" weight from drugs, but your diet is still mainly mcdonalds and steaks and food made mostly of butter, you probably will have just as many health problems. And there's no exercise drug.
> If sketchy drugs are the only ACTUAL way to get the 3/4ths of the country to lose weight and be healthier, shouldn't we try it?
Well the thing is, I actually am super skeptical that eating explosive poison is healthier than being a fatty. I am way more optimistic for wegovy and other hunger-regulating hormone treatments that don't seem to cause you to die from overheating, and I'm all for fat people taking them if it helps them be healthier. But like, I'd rather a fat person stay fat and work on doing runs (even though exercise doesn't help much in losing weight, exercise is still good for fat people) than change nothing about their lifestyle besides eating poison. Skinny isn't always == healthy and shouldn't be treated like an "at any costs" measure. A great way to lose 25% of your body weight is to chop off a leg, but chopping off legs is obviously a stupid way to get healthy.
All of these studies come to the very obvious conclusion that a good hood fan, that vents outdoors, isn’t optional. The scary numbers, as in this study, come from not using a hood fan, with “good hood fan” numbers being somewhat negligible.
I think a good middle ground (since you can’t ask everyone to rewire their homes for electric) would be some sponsored program to install heat detecting hood fan switch, so they can’t be left off by mistake.
I looked at a brand new house last year with a big gas stove, and it had a big extraction fan over it. I asked where it vented to. “Oh it’s just a carbon filter and recirculates the air”. I couldn’t believe it.
Induction stoves are better in every possible regard, except price.
Well that and they can get too hot, I warped the bottom of my carbon steel wok because my induction stove heated it up too fast! Not a problem I had with any previous gas stoves!
They’re pretty good, but their low heat performance leaves a lot to be desired. Rather than provide a consistent level of low heat, they tend to turn off and on. That’s not what I want. But overall they are decent. Cleaning the glass is annoying though.
No, they didn't perceive threats, they perceived opportunity to push harder on the culture war, since it's basically their leading platform and leading means of generating the outrage that keeps their people voting. The "threat" was entirely manufactured. The group discussing it were not even TALKING about banning or confiscating stoves.
The bud light boycott is great. It's exactly how people should respond to things they don't like. This isn't even cancel culture, it's just people no longer wanting to consume a product because of the association.
People who never used a product or watched a show going out of their way to make a 3rd party take away something other people like is what's annoying.
