TIL in the US they need an extra law to limit harmful substances in (baby) food. Normal people would call this “common sense”, but it seems to be rather uncommon in the US.
The FDA was supposed to just be regulating this as their job already. I’m not sure why they need a specific law, but I’m just going to assume the answer is Reagan.
If the FDA, FTC, USDA, EPA, Depts of Transportation, and CDC wanted to guarantee and check their work, we’d have universal healthcare. And in fact I think that’s exactly the legal argument for why the government should be FORCED to provide us healthcare - how else would we be able to catch (and class action sue for) large community-wide health hazards such as:
-asbestos in baby powder
-lead and heavy metals in vitamins and supplements
-consistency of dosing in medications
-Deaths from auto accidents when we should be having trains
-Deaths from contaminated eggs, meat, milk from bird flu or other pathogens
-Products that are blatant lies/false
-Companies leaking chemicals into water supplies
-Lead in water supply
-Heavy metals in water supply& in crops, from exhaust from cars and bits of tires
-imminent looming climate change
Gee, I wonder why corporations are scared of us getting healthcare?
What’s more depressing is that there have been 2,291 bills and amendments addressing ingredients in baby food since 1951. They range from limits on toxins to excessive additives and sugars. Most fail at introduction thanks to the lobbying power of Nestlé, who owns Gerber.
I think ‘limit’ is fine as long as that limit is under levels safe for infant consumption. It’s probably not possible to make baby food entirely free of heavy metals because they’re basically everywhere. But it is possible to make them with heavy metals under a specific safety threshold.
If we limited use of fossil fuel vehicles on farmland, that would help a lot. The exhaust from tractors along with the bits of tires left in fields etc all put heavy metals in our food supply. As it is, almost all farmland in the US needs bioremediation to reduce heavy metals in their soils.
In bones, lead can take 25-30 years to leave the body. Actually, this is true of many types of heavy metal poisoning (and radiation, eg radium), and bone loss as we get older tends to release these compounds. This is part of why they believe there’s a delay with ALS and Alzheimers between when you ingest heavy metal and when you actually develop symptoms.
In older adults, the primary source of lead exposure can be endogenous. Excretion of lead is relatively slow, and accumulation is common [31]. During early and middle life, lead is sequestered in the bones, where it replaces calcium in the hydroxyapatite structure [32]. The skeleton contains 70–95% of the body burden of lead where lead can remain for decades [32], which can be exploited for exposure assessment research. Adults experiencing loss of bone mass via osteoporosis release lead into the bloodstream. In older adults, 40–70% of blood lead can be attributed to previous body stores [32]. Lead that entered the body during previous periods of high exposure can become biologically active decades later.
Well tbf have the babies submitted a compelling case through the proper channels? Maybe they can peacefully assemble to make a difference… that’s how christians have won their battles
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