feeling hot and bothered

The weather was finally hot here today. Hello, one day of summer.

But since I’m feeling cranky, and out of touch with my blog, what better way to check back in than with a little rant?

<begin rant>

We returned the bed bumper we’d bought for Jonah because it was made of polyurethane foam and flame retardant. I don’t want either next to his face.

But that means I’m facing (ha ha) a long road of ridiculously expensive pillows and bed gear. We don’t currently have organic pillows. Jonah’s mattress is organic but ours is not. So I fight the fight sometimes, and other times, I surrender.

I looked up the name of the flame retardant the foam bed rail company uses – you may or may not bother enough with this kind of stuff to recall that PBDEs, which have been implicated in all sorts of horrible health issues and are ubiquitous in our environment now, have been pretty much phased out of production for foam in beds and couches and such, to be replaced by this new stuff (circa 2005) called Firemaster 550 (don’t you feel safer already?).

According to the Environmental Working Group, PBDEs are linked to:

an array of adverse health effects including thyroid hormone disruption, permanent learning and memory impairment, behavioral changes, hearing deficits, delayed puberty onset, decreased sperm count, fetal malformations and, possibly, cancer. Research in animals shows that exposure to brominated fire retardants in-utero or during infancy leads to more significant harm than exposure during adulthood, and at much lower levels. And some of these studies have found toxic effects at levels lower than are now detected in American women. Many questions remain, but new evidence raises concerns that low levels of PBDE exposure pose a significant health risk to developing animals, and may pose a health risk to fetuses, infants and children at levels currently detected in American women.

Nice. Makes you want to trust the latest and greatest new retardant, doesn’t it?

So I Googled this Firebuster superblaster blah blah 500, which led me to this article, which was not terribly reassuring. Except for the part that says the studies haven’t proved that brominated flame retardants are in household dust, just that they’re showing up in metropolitan waste water which… wait for it… comes from our houses. Hmmm.

So, here’s my rant part. It seems to me, just from reading that one article, that the gist of flame retardant law is to protect us from accidental fire due to smoldering cigarettes. According to the piece, which was originally published in the San Mateo County News, Bay Area Assemblyman/Hero Mark Leno is sponsoring a bill further regulating flame retardants:

A bill sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) would gradually replace the most hazardous brominated fire retardants with a special fabric requirement that would resist smoldering cigarettes.

Okay, WHO IS SMOKING ALL THESE FREAKING CIGARETTES ANYMORE????????

Seriously? Who?????????????

Shouldn’t there be an option for non-smokers to choose non-brain-damage-causing non-hormone-interrupting mattresses, bedding, and other assorted cushion-y items without having to hock an organ to the organics people? Take my thyroid, please!

I. Am. So. Irritated.

</end rant>

My loophole for the bed bolster seems to be sticking with the Pilates roller – no one expects a Pilates practitioner to drop their smoldering cigarette on it; though I’m soon to replace it with a half-roller recently ordered on Amazon* because, with a piece of felt or similar underneath, that shouldn’t slide as much as the whole-round bolster does (a $16 option vs. the $100+ for the natural latex bed bumper option).

*Update: Half-roller was a bust. Instead of molded on all sides, it was a full round roller cut in half and raining bits of plastic dust everywhere. Fail.