Flame retardant may cause hyperthyroidism in cats
phys.org
phys.org
1) It's important to note that the article title is actually: Flame retardant may cause hyperthyroidism in cats
2) Of note, they determined that a p-value of <0.10 was considered statistically significant, and of the studied compounds TDCIPP was the only one with significant odds ratio of exposure being associated with hyperthyroidism in cats (1.36, p value = 0.059).
3) Look. Organophosphates are probably one of those things that we should continue studying in detail. They seem more trouble than they're worth. But I don't think I'd hang my hat on this study alone.
Am I correct in reading that they tested 24 different compounds (or compound groups)?
Not often you see such a faithful recreation of https://xkcd.com/882/
The article shows that a flame-retardent increases risk of autoimmune condition with 94% confidence.
And you downplay it because... it's less than 95% confident? (by the way, the paper finds its main finding at p < .02)
To my mind, a major post-mortem is necessary, government funded. How many other flame-retardents cause health issues? How did they get past approval?
In the meantime, an immediate injunction against flame-retardent laws should be passed (numerous tobacco-lobbied laws REQUIRE retardents), and all used retardents should be listed on the labels of all products.
I expect the people in charge of public health to be as anal about their job as I am about mine.
Flip a coin until it comes up heads 5 times in a row. What are the odds! Well, if you keep flipping you always can see that. It's inevitable.
That's why investigation is done until there are many more 9's. Because one 9 can be found just by trying a bunch of stuff.
> That's why investigation is done until there are many more 9's
Nobody said the investigation is done. What is being said is that this alone is a red flag that warrants a lot of investigation (and the investigation shouldn't have to be research by colleges whenever a graduate student gets around to it). This is something the EPA should fund an attempt to reproduce.
It's the EPA's job to prevent dangerous chemicals from being sold in public goods. It's not college's job to need to conduct exhausting studies with absolute proof with many 9s that something is unsafe and then hand it off to the EPA to act. Once any reasonable doubt is raised the EPA needs to take ownership.
And no I did not mean some correction. I meant, that publishing is a filter for any seemingly correlated result. It will inevitably include simple coincidences, because of the sample sizes involved.
To put it simply, all coincidental results end up being published, because they look so remarkable. It's a reason to be very skeptical of small samples.
Great, we all know what publication bias is. Sure there's a non-zero chance that this is a statistical anomaly.
But my dude, what exactly is going on in your head? Numerous flame retardants have already been found dangerous and toxic [1]. Are you seriously concerned people are going to take their health too seriously and throw away their couches because of this study?
I think the exponentially more likely, and exponentially more dangerous concern is these flame-retardant chemicals aren't taken seriously enough... particularly since it's debatable whether they were ever necessary in the first place.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_retardant#Health_concern...
For instance, tiny cats (6lbs? 10?) that sleep on furniture for 8-10 hours a day show elevated flame retardant in an absorbent tag.
Do the cats respond in the same way as humans to these chemicals? (No)
Is the acceptable dose for a 10lb cat different from a 100lb person? (Yes)
Was anything else measured in the experiment (No?)
Did the experiment seek out any other explanations? (No)
This reeks of a cherry-picked goal-directed experiment to create outrage. It seems the opposite of science.
That being said, I'm not sure that you can claim that hyperthyroidism in cats is an autoimmune condition. I also am interested in what the effect size of this correlation actually is. We see the data that says that cats in 1995 had 20x lower rates of hyperthyroidism, but we don't have any additional information on how many cats were actually being screened for that. It's like saying (hopefully this isn't too controversial) the prevalence of autism is higher today than it was 20 years ago.
That's an interesting question you bring up though, whether or not we should immediately intervene based on animal studies. And this is something we should probably extend to human studies, and as far low level as basic science studies. Where do you draw the line? Do you ban cell phones? Wifi? Milk? Meat? Coffee? Aspartame?
And finally - Do you require all compounds to be listed on labels of all products? Or just some? How many compounds? Only when we find correlations? Or prior to that based on empirical evidence?
And its expensive to avoid these things, my family of three spend about 2K per month on food alone trying to eat healthy. Nothing extravagant, fruits, vegetables, and organic when it matters. Sure we could live on $400 with highly processed or fast food... but you feel terrible afterword. The longer you stay away from them the more sensitive you are to toxic food.
I spend 400/month and I don't hold back, avoid processed and junk foods.
Whatever they're doing is extravagant and not based on real science if what they say is to avoid processed food.
Plus nations with obese epidemics like US is seeing overall health of the population and life expectancy decreasing
We were smart enough to add lead to fuel, so I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if something we mindlessly use today is actually super unhealthy too. People often seem to suffer "End of History" syndrome when judging these things. "Yeah we were stupid back then but today's scientists are smart."
If people try to avoid processed food, products containing a lot of suspicious "chemicals", use the washer's program that does an extra rinse-run and whatnot I don't think that's entirely unjustified.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif...
https://www.cdc.gov/DIABETES/statistics/slides/long_term_tre...
Do we?
> Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
The major medical advances have been sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccination, which have saved the lives of millions of children. We are otherwise much unhealthier than most people in the past, unless they were unlucky enough to grow up in times of famine, which was not common - though, in all fairness to the modern world, famine has been essentially eradicated altogether in advanced countries.
At some point lead in gas was "safe", lead in paint was "safe", asbestos was "safe". Safety is an afterthought, and in some cases I'd bet my left nut that the long term negative effects are even desirable : cause a disease, sell the cure, profit
Here are some prices for central Europe. Kg of rice is 1 euro. Kg of oats is 1 euro. Potatoes and other tubers and root vegetables, even less. Cherry tomatoes, maybe 4 euros per kg. Lentils, peas, chickpeas less than 2 euros per kg. Whole chicken maybe 4 euros per kg. Chicken breasts are like 7 euros per kg if you don't want to bother with cutting it up. I think meat in general is cheaper in the USA (but quality may differ).
Do you guys eat a literal ton of vegetables a month, or do we have different ideas of what healthy food refers to?
Dozen eggs = $5-$8 Bag of apples = $5
We have some food allergies such as sensitive to gluten (wife is celiac).
Two things broken in US (that are pain points for us now) - food cost and healthcare. I pay about $800 month for healthcare that is essentially a safety net for an accident ($5K deductible). I am not sure why universal healthcare is not viewed the same as public schools. Many people dont have children but still pay taxes for schools and education. I would probably pay less than $800/month in extra taxes for healthcare.
1lb of rice: 0.89$
1lb of rolled oats: 0.69$
1lb Cherry tomatoes: $4
(Quality) chicken breast: $8
I suspect people with crazy food bills are:
1) in exceptionally expensive locations like SF or Switzerland
2) buy more packaged food
3) eat out more than you
4) maybe are taller than you
The legislators wrote that the “worst tactics outlined in the Chicago Tribune series — which we each saw some of firsthand in our states — included: deliberately misrepresenting the science around flame retardant chemicals relating to both their effectiveness and their health risks; employing an expert witness who repeatedly invoked a phony story of a child dying in a fire in order to justify flame retardant mandates; creating a front group called ‘Citizens for Fire Safety’ to counter the opposition to flame retardants among firefighters and health organizations; and using racial profiling to mislead community leaders about the impacts of toxic flame retardant chemicals.”
...
These powerful industries distorted science in ways that overstated the benefits of the chemicals, created a phony consumer watchdog group that stoked the public's fear of fire and helped organize and steer an association of top fire officials that spent more than a decade campaigning for their cause.
Do we use these tags for humans? Would be cool to see what sort of chemical exposure we get.
Also not having insurance doesn't mean instant death sentence. You can still pay yourself, however crazy amounts they are.
Disclaimer: I think whole US healthcare system is insane, especially the part where employers negotiate better rates. It's like socialised healthcare where higher earner pay more, but without any benefit to private companies...
That is illegal in the U.S., with the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genetic-...
>GINA prohibits health insurers from discrimination based on the genetic information of enrollees. Specifically, health insurers may not use genetic information to determine if someone is eligible for insurance or to make coverage, underwriting or premium-setting decisions. Furthermore, health insurers may not request or require individuals or their family members to undergo genetic testing or to provide genetic information.
In the first few weeks of owning one we realized if we leave our bedroom door open the CO2 is much lower while we sleep. Our quality of sleep has improved.
> The feline passive samplers—similar to a rabies tag—are produced out of the same material used in the silicone wrist bands invented in Anderson's lab for measuring exposure to environmental chemicals in humans, including after Hurricane Harvey in Houston in 2017.
The odds ratios for the levels of thyroid hormone in cats exposed to the compounds detected are no higher than 1.61x times higher.
The 20x increase is an increase over time, and isn’t explained by the paper or the article.
-Ray Peat
Children can be very heavy sleepers and not hear smoke alarms, and even if they do wake up, they might have a harder time getting out of a burning building than adults, so having a bit extra time because their clothes didn't catch fire would be helpful.
Seems like a good idea, until you consider the negatives of the fire retardants, and then you have a complex decision to make.
The problem is that companies introducing chemicals into a clothing product aren't required to show that they're safe, at least in the US. So considering the negatives only happens much later, if at all.
Can fire retardants be filtered by commercial off-the-shelf Air Filters?
If yes what type of tech or air filter type would filter these? For the sake of 'neutrality' would prefer a discussion focused on the working principle of the filter tech instead of just casual 'product naming'.
I think you have to have one that can capture VCOs, which puts you into expensive, but still considered normal consumer (as opposed to professional/enterprise/commercial/etc), products.
So, I'd suggest offhand to look at IQAir and Austin Air products to see if any of them state they can grab OPFRs. Their bottom level products probably won't.
Activated carbon filters are inexpensive and remove VOCs but in my experience not terribly quickly.
Basically look at the tag if it was manufactured recently.
But an unhealthy person will never get healthy by eating vegan, same as they won't get healthy by using healing crystals. It only works if you embrace the lifestyle and accept it mentally and become a "biased sample" yourself.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The update to the CA law is that manufacturers are no longer required to include flame retardants. They are still allowed to. I was surprised that even at a high-end furniture chain (Restoration Hardware), they were unable to tell me whether their furniture contained flame retardants or not.
In other words, wood, wool, and tight weave cotton are your new friends.
Sorry, I don’t remember the names of the businesses, but this was 10 years ago when the flame retardants were mandatory for synthetic materials. I don’t even know if they are still in business.
For chairs that had built in padding, we bought 1960s and 70s furniture from thrift stores with the hope this was before flame retardants were in use. We did all this after my partner and our female cat developed Hashimito’s, had years of low energy, and needed daily thyroid medication.
If you're in the UK, it's harder than that. You either find one of a handful of small companies that are prepared to interpret the law more leniently, or you import from somewhere else in the EU.
These chemicals are also in carpets, and here you're in a worse bind, because the natural fibre alternatives are generally treated against insects and/or impossible to properly clean.
This website (which I'm not sure strikes the most helpful tone) has more on the UK situation: http://www.toxicsofa.com/
Does anyone know if leather avoids/reduces these kind of chemicals?