Scent beads and laundry additives are innocuous

If you are online or on broadcast you cannot miss it: personal care corporations telling you that you stink. Even if you are using deodorant on “those places,” your body smells all over, say a disturbing number of ads, and the odor “transfers” all over your house. Just saying.

The manic ads for dryer sheets, detergents, fabric softeners, and scent “love stories” do not mention that the chemicals can affect the nervous and endocrine systems and even be carcinogens. Many washes may be required to remove the laundry risks, and that is before we get to dishes washed in marketed detergents.

Antibacterial cleansers are necessary

An orgy of antibacterial dish, body, and laundry soaps emerged in the 2000s to help people get “better than clean.” But the bacterial overkill, when soap and water work just as well, fuels antibiotic resistance and possibly childhood allergies by preventing exposure to natural microbes in the environment.

But there is a worse problem: The antibiotic products are often endocrine and hormone disrupters, the same compounds that produce franken-frogs and other wildlife casualties in polluted streams and ecospheres.

Studies show that one “antibacterial” pesticide, triclosan, found in Colgate’s Total toothpaste, actually breaks down into chloroform with tap water and dioxin in the environment. It impairs thyroid function and lives in human breast milk, urine and blood. Despite warnings in news outlets, triclosan is still found in legally sold dental products.

Tuna and sushi are safe after mercury exposes

Is your tuna filled with mercury from industrial pollution? Many years ago the Chicago Tribune said unequivocally yes. “The tuna industry has failed to adequately warn consumers about the risks of eating canned tuna, while federal regulators have been reluctant to include the fish in their mercury advisories, at times amid heavy lobbying by industry,” said the newspaper. Three years later, the New York Times found similar contamination in area sushi.

Many people believe the seafood scare is over but it is hardly over, it is just unreported. Mercury levels in tuna have not changed since 1971 according to the American Chemical Society (ACS). Why do news outlets no longer report risks? Look at their advertisers.

Depression is progressive

Just like consumer products for “dry” or “color-treated” hair, drug sellers came up with different depression categories to sell antidepressants like “treatment-resistant,” “atypical,” “bipolar,” “persistent,” and “progressive” depression.

Thanks to marketing spin, “treatment-resistant depression” meant pharma could double and even triple the money it got out of patients by adding more drugs to a “diagnosis.” (Postscript: Did antidepressant makers also get kickbacks from glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) makers for the weight gain? Some suspect so.)

A few years ago, pharma arrived at another selling point for antidepressants: Depression is “progressive”, and if you do not wait, you will get worse. Such concocted urgency is a mainstay of retailers, “do not wait; these prices will not last,” and it clearly works with pharma products. Meanwhile, the true danger the public faces, that antidepressants are addictive (or present a “discontinuation syndrome” as pharma spins), is barely reported.

Meat is safe if you cook it

Cooking kills meat pathogens like Escherichia coli (E. coli), Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter, but according to government reports, veterinary drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals like copper and arsenic do not cook out of meat.

The most recent Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) residue report also found antibiotics galore in dairy cows, veal, beef cows, and steers such as sulfadimethoxine, penicillin, neomycin, ciprofloxacin, flunixin, and several others.

Nor are luncheon meat, ham, and hot dogs that are pre-cooked safer. To kill germs and maintain a “natural” color, they are treated with nitrites, which become nitrosamines, proven carcinogens. Red meat at the grocer may be courtesy of carbon monoxide, and pink-colored farmed salmon is from a carotenoid pigment called astaxanthin.

Do not be dismayed

If you are a conscientious consumer, do not let industry verisimilitude dismay you. While some industry players have lobbied to keep their risky ingredients off labels, others are aware of safety conscious consumers and they hear you.

Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter.