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Boy, people were careless and stupid back then. I wonder how many things we do today will be seen in a similar way 50 years from now. If you believe everything

Boy, people were careless and stupid back then. I wonder how many things we do today will be seen in a similar way 50 years from now. If you believe everything you read somewhere online, then pretty much anything today is poisonous and will kill us, but just statistically some of these have to be right.

LambdaComplex 8y ago
Tanning beds.
- i80and 8y ago
  Tanning beds are already generally already accepted as being dangerous
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    They're still allowed, though. The shoe X-ray machines were banned. Someone in fifty years could easily say "Can you believe they used to allow stores where you'd pay to go into a pod and purposely be given skin cancer?!"
icefo 8y ago
I'm betting for our carelessness towards endocrine disruptors. The toxic plastics in baby bottles and the non stick frying pans for example
- masklinn 8y ago
  Would that not be one of the "careless and stupid back then" which we're starting to wise up to?
- gaius 8y ago
  The synthetic hormones in The Pill don’t break down either, they are steadily accumulating in the drinking water supply.
KineticLensman 8y ago
> If you believe everything you read somewhere online, then pretty much anything today is poisonous Amongst the tools in our armoury here is 'kill or cure' [0], whose mission is "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it" [0] http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
Eating vast amounts of sugar for one
ken 8y ago
It's not hard to identify plenty of other cases where we do crazy things. It's just hard to stop doing them when everybody else does them, and expects us to do the same. "When people moved around by getting in single-passenger human-piloted vehicles powered by burning fossil fuels and venting the exhaust directly into the atmosphere." That one's pretty easy to identify now because it's far enough along we're at the tipping point where it's no longer crazy to talk about replacements. There's a dozen others you see every day which aren't close to that tipping point, and I'd be called crazy just for mentioning them in this category.
martin-adams 8y ago
I do have this feeling that mobile phones will be the cancer causing thing of our generation. For what I understand, the World Health Organization has classified it as ‘possibly carcinogenic’. Others that I won’t be surprised if it bites us are Nitrates in food, Aspartame, Vaping, red meat, refined carbs.
- IggleSniggle 8y ago
  WHO has classified as “possibly carcinogenic,” which means “we don’t know, it’s hard to prove a negative.” Other things that WHO has classified as “possibly carcinogenic” are coffee, power-lines, and talc powder. In other words, we haven’t proven that there isn’t a risk, and it’s worth doing more research to try and discover if there is a risk because it would be a pretty big deal if there is...but it’s not an easy thing to control for. I don’t think we’ll have an answer to this during this century, unless it conclusively _does_ cause harm (current studies indicate that it does not).
  - userbinator 8y ago
    talc powder Given the recent news about there being small bits of asbestos mixed in, one has to wonder if that was the actual reason for it being on the list.
  - martin-adams 8y ago
    I think that is why I put these in the 50 year category before we'll know more confidently either way. Where we don't have a direct way to control the outcome because it's hard to simulate real word effects in a short period of time, we might see more causation effects over a 50 year period. That said, I'm not saying they are carcinogenic, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. Short answer, I don't hold the phone near my head, I leave it out of my jeans pocket as much as possible, and have it on flight mode at night.
userbinator 8y ago
Back then, people didn't worry too much about risk. They just lived and died. Which begs the philosophical question, if we continue on the trend of trying to reduce risk and take that to its extreme conclusion, what is really left of life? People do tons of things every day that put them at risk of an early death --- many of them even enjoy it.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  There's a difference between not knowing and knowing but still choosing to do the activity. I ride a motorcycle, and I am fully aware of the dangers involved. I also know that going the speed limit, wearing a helmet, and not drinking anything will significantly reduce my risk of death, but that it's still more dangerous than driving a car. At the same time, I know that breathing in sawdust, paint fumes, and many other things is dangerous for me, so I have a mask that I wear when doing work around my house, and I ensure that there is good ventilation. The "cost" of doing those things is small compared to the possible benefits, so I do them. And without the information that those things are dangerous, I would be putting my wellbeing at risk for no good reason.
tejtm 8y ago
electronic devices in the service anything other than the human holding it
timcederman 8y ago
There are four I can think of off the top of my head: 1. We're pretty careless with VOCs and other chemicals (e.g. off-gassing new furniture in enclosed environments, or from heated teflon). Folks should open windows more often, plus it's a shame it's not more widely known how easy it is to get exposed to this. 2. There are flame retardant chemicals in just about all soft furniture in the US, which end up as dust particles and end up ingested/inhaled. 3. Phthalates in everything. 4. Glyphosate showing up in large quantities in food, particularly kids' cereal.
c3534l 8y ago
It seems like the technology needs to be new and cause health effects that can blend in with normal mortality rates to avoid detection for some period of time. Radiation, asbestos, smoking - these avoided detection because they're from chronic use and it took a while to see the true side-effects of these things.

LambdaComplex 8y ago

Tanning beds.

i80and 8y ago
Tanning beds are already generally already accepted as being dangerous
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  They're still allowed, though. The shoe X-ray machines were banned. Someone in fifty years could easily say "Can you believe they used to allow stores where you'd pay to go into a pod and purposely be given skin cancer?!"

icefo 8y ago

I'm betting for our carelessness towards endocrine disruptors. The toxic plastics in baby bottles and the non stick frying pans for example

masklinn 8y ago
Would that not be one of the "careless and stupid back then" which we're starting to wise up to?
gaius 8y ago
The synthetic hormones in The Pill don’t break down either, they are steadily accumulating in the drinking water supply.

KineticLensman 8y ago

> If you believe everything you read somewhere online, then pretty much anything today is poisonous Amongst the tools in our armoury here is 'kill or cure' [0], whose mission is "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it" [0] http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago

Eating vast amounts of sugar for one

ken 8y ago

It's not hard to identify plenty of other cases where we do crazy things. It's just hard to stop doing them when everybody else does them, and expects us to do the same. "When people moved around by getting in single-passenger human-piloted vehicles powered by burning fossil fuels and venting the exhaust directly into the atmosphere." That one's pretty easy to identify now because it's far enough along we're at the tipping point where it's no longer crazy to talk about replacements. There's a dozen others you see every day which aren't close to that tipping point, and I'd be called crazy just for mentioning them in this category.

martin-adams 8y ago

I do have this feeling that mobile phones will be the cancer causing thing of our generation. For what I understand, the World Health Organization has classified it as ‘possibly carcinogenic’. Others that I won’t be surprised if it bites us are Nitrates in food, Aspartame, Vaping, red meat, refined carbs.

IggleSniggle 8y ago
WHO has classified as “possibly carcinogenic,” which means “we don’t know, it’s hard to prove a negative.” Other things that WHO has classified as “possibly carcinogenic” are coffee, power-lines, and talc powder. In other words, we haven’t proven that there isn’t a risk, and it’s worth doing more research to try and discover if there is a risk because it would be a pretty big deal if there is...but it’s not an easy thing to control for. I don’t think we’ll have an answer to this during this century, unless it conclusively _does_ cause harm (current studies indicate that it does not).
- userbinator 8y ago
  talc powder Given the recent news about there being small bits of asbestos mixed in, one has to wonder if that was the actual reason for it being on the list.
- martin-adams 8y ago
  I think that is why I put these in the 50 year category before we'll know more confidently either way. Where we don't have a direct way to control the outcome because it's hard to simulate real word effects in a short period of time, we might see more causation effects over a 50 year period. That said, I'm not saying they are carcinogenic, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. Short answer, I don't hold the phone near my head, I leave it out of my jeans pocket as much as possible, and have it on flight mode at night.

userbinator 8y ago

Back then, people didn't worry too much about risk. They just lived and died. Which begs the philosophical question, if we continue on the trend of trying to reduce risk and take that to its extreme conclusion, what is really left of life? People do tons of things every day that put them at risk of an early death --- many of them even enjoy it.

Klathmon 8y ago
There's a difference between not knowing and knowing but still choosing to do the activity. I ride a motorcycle, and I am fully aware of the dangers involved. I also know that going the speed limit, wearing a helmet, and not drinking anything will significantly reduce my risk of death, but that it's still more dangerous than driving a car. At the same time, I know that breathing in sawdust, paint fumes, and many other things is dangerous for me, so I have a mask that I wear when doing work around my house, and I ensure that there is good ventilation. The "cost" of doing those things is small compared to the possible benefits, so I do them. And without the information that those things are dangerous, I would be putting my wellbeing at risk for no good reason.

tejtm 8y ago

electronic devices in the service anything other than the human holding it

timcederman 8y ago

There are four I can think of off the top of my head: 1. We're pretty careless with VOCs and other chemicals (e.g. off-gassing new furniture in enclosed environments, or from heated teflon). Folks should open windows more often, plus it's a shame it's not more widely known how easy it is to get exposed to this. 2. There are flame retardant chemicals in just about all soft furniture in the US, which end up as dust particles and end up ingested/inhaled. 3. Phthalates in everything. 4. Glyphosate showing up in large quantities in food, particularly kids' cereal.

c3534l 8y ago

It seems like the technology needs to be new and cause health effects that can blend in with normal mortality rates to avoid detection for some period of time. Radiation, asbestos, smoking - these avoided detection because they're from chronic use and it took a while to see the true side-effects of these things.