Another stupid regulation

California’s Proposition 65, enacted in 1986, mandates that businesses with more than 10 employees warn consumers if their products contain chemicals that the state has ruled as carcinogenic. One of these chemicals is acrylamide. If you pump a rat full of huge doses of the stuff, he or she will get cancer. But such a scenario doesn’t come close to approximating real life. We are not rats; we do not drink gallons of acrylamide. In fact, the American Cancer Society reports that acrylamide does not increase the risk of cancer.

What’s more, acrylamide is not an industrial additive. It occurs any time you cook starches at temperatures above 250 degrees. Thus, when you toast bread and roast potatoes, you’re producing acrylamide. In fact, acrylamide is found in about 40 percent of the calories consumed by people in the U.S.

Coffee contains acrylamide and always has. Recently, a superior court judge in California has ruled that coffee sellers must post a cancer warning sign, even though plenty of studies show that coffee is associated with a lower risk of cancer. Among other things, it’s an anti-oxidant. Nevertheless, coffee sellers must knuckle under and post the sign, as we saw the other day at Starbucks.

So—yet another warning sign for us to ignore. Who reads all these warning signs? Do you read the one that pops up on your car console telling you to drive safely (or whatever it says)?  As Dr. Aaron Carroll, a professor at Indiana University School of Medicine says, “Warning labels should be applied when a danger is clear, a danger is large, and a danger is avoidable. …. If Americans slap a label on every substance that has the potential to cause cancer, those labels will stop having meaning.”

That’s for sure. I never did read the sign posted at Starbucks, not even after putting it in this blog post.

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Can we talk?

My 83-year-old sister was recently involved in an automobile accident, one that totaled her car and deployed the airbag. She hit her head on something and it was bleeding. Though she basically felt OK, those around her urged her to go to the ER, so she did. Over the course of five hours, she was shunted here and there for a variety of tests, including an EKG for her heart, a cat scan for her head, an x-ray for her chest, and a blood sample. (They also gave her a cup for a urine test, but she ignored it and they never asked for it. Note to sister: see if it appears on the bill!) It turns out she was fine test-wise, but not comfort-wise. Nobody came to look her over to check her head or anything else. No one explained the purpose of the various tests. (A urinalysis! Give me a break!) She had a million questions, but no one to ask.

This is all too common. When I recently went to the orthopedic doc to get a cortisone shot in my knee (my idea), a physician’s assistant came in and asked some questions. He also said I should get an x-ray, even though I’d had one just over a year ago. He hinted that it was an insurance issue and needed for comparison purposes. But when I saw the doc, he seemed in a rush. As far as I could tell, he never compared the x-rays. He did give me the shot, but I wanted to discuss a couple of things. He didn’t. He just wanted to get to the next patient.

When my husband was seeking help from his gastroenterologist, he never did see the doc. It was always the physician’s assistant. When my daughter wanted to discuss a change in pain meds following a knee replacement, they had no interest in discussing options. They were done with her.

Doctors don’t get paid to talk to you. Remember Sarah Palin’s “death panels?” When congress was considering legislation that would allow doctors to get paid for counseling Medicare patients about end-of-life issues, Palin made it sound as though the bureaucrats in Washington would decide who was “worthy of medical care.” Because of her efforts, the provision was not included in the Affordable Care Act.

Please. Can we talk?

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Safety regulations: way overdone, in my book

I am essentially a bleeding-heart liberal. But at times, I consider myself a libertarian, especially where regulations are concerned. Of course, many regulations are valuable, such as those regulating financial institutions. But many go overboard. Take ladders. I went to the OSHA site for ladder regulations and counted more than 80. Some made me laugh out loud as I visualized the ladder users disobeying instructions. For example: “Ladders shall not be moved, shifted, or extended while occupied; When ascending or descending a ladder, the user shall face the ladder.”

As a result, ladders are littered with safety messages. Have you ever read those?  Who does? I am saving you the trouble by giving you a summary of what’s on our ladder:

• On the last step: "Danger. Do not stand at or above this level. You can lose your balance."
• On the right side: “Failure to read and follow instructions on this ladder may result in injuries or death; and, “Caution: Keep body centered between side rails. Do not over-reach. Set all four feet on firm level surface. Wear slip resistant shoes.” [Question: What four-footed creatures use ladders?]
• On the inside and outside of the rails are 21 instructions for proper setup and use—too numerous to mention, but here are two: “Use extreme caution getting on and off ladder;” and, “Never walk, bounce, or move ladder while on it.”
• On the back: “Do not climb back section.”
• On the drop-down shelf; “Not a step.”

I say, just leave me alone and let me take my chances and live dangerously like this guy.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

The trials and triumphs of left-handed people

My sister, who is left handed, tells me that she got a new stove cooktop and that the knobs are all on the right, which is a very awkward setup for her (and others like her, of course). She has a litany of woes of this sort. For example, gas pumps: “If you face them, the nozzle thing is on your far right, so you must train your right hand and arm to do the job.” Obviously, it’s a right-handed world. At least left-handed children are no longer forced to write with their right hands, as was the case with my friend Ruth, who tells me that “The hand change hurt my learning ability so much that it affected my self-esteem.”

There are plenty of advantages to being left handed. Most of you lefties process language on both sides of your brains. (Right handers process language mostly on the left side.) This may make you excel at language skills. Five of our last eight presidents were lefties, including Obama, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan (not Trump, as you’ve probably surmised). 

Lefties are also over-represented in intellectually demanding professions, such as college professors, and appear to excel in math and music (Einstein and Newton were left handed). Lots of our cleverest people are/were left handed, such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Jimi Hendrix. Leonardo da Vinci was famously left-handed. The list is actually quite long.

An interesting study found that left-handed men who finished four years of college earn 21 percent more than right-handed men with the same education. Oddly, this discrepancy doesn’t apply to women. Some theorize that left-handed men “think more like women;” that is, they can process several threads of information simultaneously. Because women already think like women (are multi-taskers), being left handed confers no added value in the marketplace.

Who knows? Maybe dealing with right-handed gas pumps and stove knobs serve to strengthen the already superior brains of you lefties! So get over it!

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.