5 ms·
The one that recently shocked me was modeling clay. My elementary school kid loves playing with clay, so I bought him some Fimo, which is proudly marketed as “n
by yojo 2y ago
The one that recently shocked me was modeling clay. My elementary school kid loves playing with clay, so I bought him some Fimo, which is proudly marketed as “non-toxic.” On a lark I looked it up anyway. It’s 11-14% phthalates by weight![1]. All the polymer clays are necessarily high in it - they’re made by compositing clay, PVC, and plasticizers. Blew my mind, and we’re giving this stuff to kids!
[1] https://pirg.org/resources/hidden-hazards/ https://pirg.org/resources/hidden-hazards/
- irrational 2y agoWhen I was a kid, they still allowed us to play with Mercury with our bare hands in elementary school.
- krustyburger 2y agoWell, that seems safe enough. It’s the smallest planet, after all.
- mc32 2y agoFor the titans maybe but not for regular mortals.
- blipvert 2y agoMy dad gave mercury toys (tilt mazes with mercury blobs in, etc) to my siblings and I. And he was a chemistry teacher!
- daymanstep 2y agoElemental mercury isn't that toxic. It's the vapors that are dangerous.
- blipvert 2y agoFair point, but I still wouldn’t give my idiot 10yr old self that stuff. He never did really understand me.
- Unbefleckt 2y agoI had the original Warhammer figurines as a kid that my older brother didn't want. I remember bending the metal (I was maybe 4 or 5) and putting it in my mouth for some reason like I did with lego when I couldn't snap a piece off. I ended up swallowing a piece and vomiting up a bit of eldar soon after. Still have pleasant associations with the smell of lead thanks to warhammer.
- Aaronstotle 2y agoMy grandma grew up in Soviet Kyiv, she told me kids they would break thermometers and play with the mercury
- IshKebab 2y agoI mean playing with small amounts of elemental mercury is pretty safe. Yeah it's toxic but if you play with it in your hands once or twice in your life nothing is going to happen. Maybe not great for the teacher.
- beAbU 2y agoYou can make play dough at home by cooking a flour and water mixture till it thickens up, add lots of salt (to discourage eating) and colouring to taste. When I was a child my mom would cook me a fresh batch every month or so during my frequent clay phases.
- cptskippy 2y agoPolymer clay and modeling clay have very different properties compared to play dough. Play dough is something that kids grow out of in the first year or two of Elementary school.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago[flagged]
- yojo 2y agoYep, my kid is into making very detailed little animal sculpts that endure. Playdough fails on both of those dimensions. We've switched to air dry clay (Crayola Model Magic), which is closer to the polymer clay, but still doesn't work quite as well for fine-detail, and is far less durable.
- beedeebeedee 2y agoYou can make modeling clay with dry clay and mineral oil (with some glycerin)
- yojo 2y agoDo you have a recipe or resource you can point me to? I'd love to try it.
- beedeebeedee 2y agoI don't sadly. I did it empirically (my oil-based modeling clay would separate and become hard, so I started heating it and adding oil, and then started making new modeling clay from scratch). I used clay powder, but I just looked at some websites for making homemade modeling clay and they use calcium carbonate or talc, so I'm not sure what to suggest. My clay turned out fine (but theirs might be better).
- criticalfault 2y agoIt reminds me of the DDT era, but corrupt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDVuugQmxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUDVuugQmxE People were probably ignorant when they were spraying kids with DDT. Today it's ignorance mixed with greed.