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Comment by permo-w | Hacker News Reader

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

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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

Why are you confident cotton isn't carcinogenic?

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

> it would be worse if I was a woman I'm sure, god knows what nonsense cosmetics contain

They can always not apply them.

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

Yes, if they want to opt out of society. In most places outside the farm, for a woman not to apply makeup is career and social suicide.

Codswallop

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?

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