Comment by raamdev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raamdev | Hacker News Reader

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I have a baby girl turning 1 in a few weeks and my wife and I opted to only use glass bottles for her.

More scary, however, is all the stuff they put in everything else. For example, the fire retardant chemicals they use in manufacturing things like baby mattresses, which have been shown to cause neurological issues, especially in children. Look for a tag on any pillows or mattresses that says "complies with California Technical Bulletin 117"; that means it was treated. Also, check out the documentary "Toxic Hot Seat". My wife and I sleep on the floor, with a few blankets, and have slept with our daughter between us since day one (she never slept in a crib).

I felt so unprepared prior to my daughters birth. I still feel terribly unprepared. But I find that I'm a lot more proactive now about doing my own research to at least help reduce the probability that I'll put my little one in danger (and all we can really do is reduce the probability, since massive amounts of misinformation ensure it will be nearly impossible for the average person to really get to the truth about some of this stuff).

Stick with wool mattresses and clothing for infants and toddlers and you should be good - fire resistant, water resistant and very comfortable. All of our big beds are either natural latex mattresses inside ecowool covers or pure wool in a quilted wool cover.

I thought flame retardants still had to be added to wool mattresses.

This source seems to back that up, but the information may be biased or out of date. http://www.strobel.com/wool_burns.htm

So bad about fire retardant in mattresses.

They got the law that forces every mattress threated with the excuse that it will give you time if a fire starts. Big business.

What they don't tell you is that most fires in homes are created by smokers. If nobody in your home smokes you should be able to opt out of buying this sh*t.

Ok so a bunch of people have commented on that, but what is the mechanism of toxicity of the chemicals? Can they be absorbed through the stomach, skin, inhaled? Are they surface bound or on the filling? Would you have to eat the filling to be exposed? What are the threshold levels involved to create danger?

Apparently, smoking related fires are deadly, but rarer than you'd think (causing only 2% of residential fires, though surprisingly 14% of deaths). But point taken with regards to smoking in bed, which is apparently still a thing..

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/smoking.shtm

That's trading evils a bit though. Before fire retardants in furniture, I believe fires involving furniture was a leading cause of death (and not just in babies)

> My wife and I sleep on the floor, with a few blankets, and have slept with our daughter between us since day one

And when your daughter is old enough to talk, she'll tell everyone she sleeps on the floor, and CPS will come take her away (this sort of thing is a major fear of mine -- some minor idiosyncrasy or eccentricity will be taken out of context and misinterpreted as a sign of an "unfit" home, and they'll come a-knockin').

I grew up sleeping on the floor, and I was home schooled (through high school). As a kid, I had a premade story ready-to-go if a stranger asked why I wasn't in school: "I have a dentist appointment today."

I'll be home schooling my daughter and I think by the time she's old enough to "tell everyone" anything, I'll have already explained things to her.

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