In collaboration with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and as a precautionary measure, McDonald’s USA today issued a voluntary product recall of the four Shrek Forever After™ promotional glassware currently being offered in U.S. restaurants.

To be clear, the glassware was evaluated by an independent third-party laboratory, accredited by the CPSC, and determined to be in compliance with all applicable federal and state requirements at the time of manufacture and distribution. However, in light of the CPSC’s evolving assessment of standards for consumer products, McDonald’s determined in an abundance of caution that a voluntary recall of the Shrek Forever After glassware is appropriate.

Note that this only pertains to “Shrek Forever After” glasses, not to Happy Meal toys, or to previous glass series.

War has broken out on the pages of the world’s top scientific journal in toxicology – Toxicological Sciences – and for those watching it unfold, the intense combat, drawing in world leaders in their fields, has produced a clear and remarkable outcome: The panic over the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is not only unjustified, it has reached a point where the failure to accept basic, rational principles in scientific research is damaging toxicology itself, wasting taxpayers money and undermining scientific progress.

I’m always interested in articles about BPA, because it was right when I was first buying baby gear that the whole story broke.  I remember going to Babies R Us about six times to try to find the Dr. Brown’s BPA free baby bottles, but they were always sold out.  People were panicked about BPA, and the non BPA bottles would fly off the shelves.  I couldn’t even buy them online.  When you’re expecting your first baby, you just want to get all the stuff in the house before the big day, and these BPA free bottles were a huge pain in the butt.

Two years of motherhood have calmed me down.  I will now microwave broccoli in just about any plastic container.  And according to this article, that’s probably okay.

Trevor Butterworth writes quite a bit about BPA.  His lengthy (seriously lengthy, but organized so you can jump around) article entitled “Science Suppressed:  How America Became Obsessed with BPA” can be found here.

Even with this decision, Dr. Offit said, “it’s very hard to unscare people after you’ve scared them.”

To sum up the following pages, the vaccine is similar to the seasonal flu vaccine and yes, multi-dose vials do contain thimerosal.  There is a single dose vial available which does not contain thimerosal.  Thimerosal is a preservative that has been removed from most vaccines because of concerns about a link to autism, but no such link was ever proven.  Because the flu vaccine has to be manufactured quickly in large batches, it requires some kind of preservative in multi-dose vials so it doesn’t become contaminated with bacteria and fungi.  (Yech.)  Links:

General Questions and Answers on the H1N1 Vaccine from CDC

General Questions and Answers on Thimerosal from the CDC

And now let’s get to straightening out some of the lies.

Harriet Hall on Science Based Medicine does a great takedown of the fear mongering surrounding the H1N1 vaccine.

A favorite quote:

Claim: People should be allowed to “self-shield.” For self-shielding you go home lock the doors and stay there. Then you can try to further protect yourself with nano-silver, homeopathic remedies, cold packs, vitamins, flavonoids, zinc, astaxanthin, magnesium, and other stuff.

Fact: A self-imposed quarantine is better than nothing, but I question whether it would be effective in practice. The suggested (untested) remedies might conceivably keep people entertained so they are more willing to stay home.

Hee hee.

“More on flu woo” on Science Based Medicine explains some other misguided thinking about the flu.

And finally, an “Influenza Primer” on Science Based Medicine explains why this flu is different from normal seasonal flu.

If you just read or even skim these articles, you should be reassured that the benefits of the H1N1 vaccine outweigh the risks.  And you can make an educated decision about who in your household should get the vaccine.  We’re definitely getting our 15-month-old son vaccinated, and I will probably get vaccinated myself.  I am not among the groups listed as high priority, but I work in a public school, and I’d like to minimize the chance that I will get swine flu.

If I were pregnant or trying to get pregnant, I would not hesitate to vaccinate myself against H1N1. So far, the 2009 H1N1 virus has affected pregnant women more severely than the general population.

So that’s the real information.  Next post, I’ll muse about some of the misinformation I’m hearing in my neck of the woods.

Apparently a study shows that PCBs can cause developmental abnormalities in rats that are quite similar to autism.  And PCBs do show up in breast milk and are passed on to nursing babies.  This does not mean that nursing necessarily causes autism, but it does mean that more studies should be done on the effect of PCBs on human populations.  Happy reading.

In the interview, Halden says freezing bottled water is perfectly safe. Plastics don’t contain dioxins; and, even if they did, freezing slows down chemical reactions. This guy is a real expert with lots of good info. Check out the article.

It seems like there is a lot of anxiety right now about what we (and especially our children) ingest. Lots of concern about things givin’ ya cancer. I want to be aware and protect my child’s health, of course, but I don’t like getting scared for no reason. There are enough real things to worry about as a mom. I’m learning not to trust every health alert e-mail that is forwarded to me (even from friends.) Getting information from the source, I’m finding, is very helpful and re-assuring. Also, I’ve started using snopes.com, an urban legend fact-checking site, to separate fact from fiction.

Now I can get back to worrying about nutrition, traffic safety, classroom behavior and self-esteem–yay!

Have fun freezing drinks this summer!

A recent study showed that children who spend more time in daycare than their non-daycare-attending counterparts tended to act out more by the time they reached kindergarten. (The newscast below says, “went to school,” so I’m assuming that’s kindergarten, but I suppose it could be pre-school.) And apparently, researchers found that the quality of the facility and those who supervise doesn’t matter—it’s the length of time kids spend in daycare that may affect behavior.

What do you think, readers? Have you seen any difference in children you know? Would you attribute the length of time these children spend in a daycare facility or at home to be the primary reason for any major behavioral differences?

By the way, if you can find the text of the study itself, let me know. I did a quick search and came up empty-handed.

First, we’ve got a set of posts about dad’s role in parenting. Blake talks about how stay-at-home-dads face a set of cultural assumptions that are quite a bit different than those placed on moms in At-Home Fatherhood. Emma asks if some of these assumptions are encouraged and perpetuated by the moms, in Dads: Parenting or Babysitting? And Dan’s t-ball coaching adventure illustrates that even doing a traditional “dad” activity is real parenting.

Dr. Alan Singer talks about rationally weighing the risks of different types of dangers in Shiri is Right; Everything’s Bad for You. On a related note, one of the Rational Moms investigates whether she should worry about smoke residue in her car in Third Hand Smoke–How Much Do I Worry About This One?

Figur8 questions advice about spoiling your baby with love in The Relationship Between Babies and Vitamin L for Love.

Dale talks about how the super-popular kids’ book Olivia feeds current pathological drive for super-parenting to produce superkids in The Dark Side of Olivia.

Then Podblack talks about a mom who uses her eight-year-old daughter in her psychic show in The ‘Child Psychic’ – Dr Krissy Wilson Speaks Out On Today Tonight.

And for our carnival’s grand finale, Skepdad Brad gives us a comprehensive and skeptical look at the plethora of potty-training advice out there in Potty Training Advice For the Skeptical Parent.

That’s it this month, folks. Be sure to tune in next month when Skeptical Parent Crossing will be hosted at Clashing Culture! And between now an then, consider submitting your articles here.

With no time to peruse ads and make the rounds to dealerships, we went to the place where I bought my first used car in LA. I’m not sure why I went back there, since I wasn’t really happy with the car I got. But I guess I just knew where this place was and I knew we could get a car there fast. We found a Honda with low miles and got a fairly good deal, after a round of theatrics and fake cell phone calls by our cheesified dealers. The classic line:

“Let me get my manager. I’ve only been here for six months. He’s been here for ten years. He can make a deal.”

Apparently we were supposed to be excited about the idea of a super experienced used car salesman. Then the manager showed up. He looked like Dracula. We were scared.

We had thought going in there with a baby would somehow give us an advantage, but at that point, three-month-old Zack began to cry and spit up on the floor. (He was prone to reflux deluxe back in those days.) And we wanted out. We bought our car after talking down the interest rate and even getting a little off on the price. Yes, we could have done better, but the dealers wore us out. It’s what they’re great at. And were seriously covered in spit up. (Life was all about spit up in those days.)

Then we left, and we were happy with the car. Drove great. Nice color. Life was good. Until a few days later, when whatever our cheesified dealers had sprayed in the car wore off, and we realized that the entire interior was heavily saturated with cigarette smoke.

For us alone, this would have been just an inconvenience. But we bought this car in order to transport our infant son to daycare. Okay, so he really only spends 15 minutes a day in there, but this is also our family car, and we do our shopping and errands and take trips to visit my folks in it. So he does a little more time on some weekends. And every time I’m in the car, I can’t stop thinking that somehow the smell of the lingering smoke is not only disgusting but possibly unhealthy.

And then this lovely article came out in the New York Times. The story reports on a study done on third hand smoke. Yep, third hand smoke is what they’re calling the stench that remains in enclosed spaces. And yep, it could be dangerous. Okay, could be. And do people know about this? That seems to be exactly what the study asks.

The study reported on attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households across the United States. It found that the vast majority of both smokers and nonsmokers were aware that second-hand smoke is harmful to children. Some 95 percent of nonsmokers and 84 percent of smokers agreed with the statement that “inhaling smoke from a parent’s cigarette can harm the health of infants and children.”

But far fewer of those surveyed were aware of the risks of third-hand smoke. Since the term is so new, the researchers asked people if they agreed with the statement that “breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.” Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with that statement, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.

But the study, from what I can see in this article, doesn’t prove that it’s dangerous. Or that it isn’t. Or how long the danger lasts after the last cigarette is smoked in a room. This study asks whether people know that there is a danger. But…is there?

The article in the NY Times lists many of the toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and it emphasizes that many of them are carcinogenic. Whenever I hear the word toxic now, I know to be slightly more skeptical than I would have been in the past. Now I know that almost anything in a great enough quantity can be toxic, and I know that toxins in small quantities aren’t really that bad. I know this because I listen to Skeptics Guide to the Universe and I’ve heard Steven Novella say it. And I trust that guy.

But we’re talking about known toxic substances here. And they’re stuck in the ceiling upholstery of our car. There’s no denying that on a hot day, the car smells like an ashtray when you open the door. And the cruel joke of it is that somehow a rainy, cold day has the same effect.

A couple months after we bought the car, our cheesy dealer called just to see if we were happy, because he was moving on to another dealership and wanted referrals. I had to be honest with him and tell him that I was very unhappy, because I couldn’t believe he had sold a smoker’s car to a couple with a young baby. He chuckled his way out of the confrontation.

So I have this to say to all of you here on the internet: do not buy a car from a guy named E—- S—-.

(I actually did put his real name and even posted it for 20 whole minutes, but then I had to get out of bed and erase it. I just can’t lose anyone business in this economy. It’s too mean. And as far as I know, it’s not like the guy did anything illegal. I mean, being a cheeseball is still within the law, right?)

In my mad Googling to see whether the smoke smell in my car was slowly killing us all, I came across an abstract of a study that measured nicotine pollution in cars. So okay, there’s nicotine pollution. But how bad is that? How long does the harmful effect last? The most useful thing I found in this abstract was this sentence:

Disclosure requirements and smoke-free certifications could help protect nonsmoking buyers of used cars.

I’m not sure if we are being protected from actual harm, but I am completely in favor of a smoke-free certification if it protects me from the pain in the ass factor of having a smoke smelly car.

I also discovered that California has a “Smoke-free Cars With Minors” law, which says that you cannot smoke with kids in the car. If you do, and you’re caught, you can be fined $100. I can’t imagine this law will keep anyone from smoking in a car. If you’re paying for cigarettes every week, I doubt a $100 fine will stop you from smoking wherever you want. But maybe I’m wrong. I don’t smoke, so I couldn’t say. The law also brings up all kinds of issues about personal freedom and just how much government should be interfering in people’s lives.

But a law requiring a dealer to tell me about a smoky car seems fair to me. It just requires a seller to be honest. And it lets the buyer make an informed decision. And okay, it probably lowers the resale value of the car, so somebody loses, but since it’s not me, I’m still thinking it’s a great idea.

As it is, we’d lose too much money if we returned it to the dealer. So it’s an ongoing discussion. My husband drives the car most of the time, and whenever I’m in it, I get antsy and irritated and say stuff like, “I cannot believe how long this smell has lasted. It must be bad for Zack.”

And my husband says it just can’t be that bad. And then I remember that I grew up riding around in cars with my parents, who smoked (until they quit when I was maybe six), and my grandparents, who smoked, and well, I’m fine. I came out of that okay.

And we’re not even talking about smoking. This is old smoke.

Anyway, we’re going to try to clean the car before we give up and trade it. Any advice appreciated.

For starters, catgirl asks “For comparison, how hazardous is a normal light bulb?”

Great question! I hadn’t really thought about it. I’d say the short answer is that while both types of bulbs have their drawbacks, I’d rather have an incandescent bulb break a foot from my face than a CFL (curly) bulb. But I don’t think either is going to kill me.

I found a few  material safety data sheets (MSDS) on the internet for incandescent bulbs: here,  here and here (all pdfs). They all stress that unbroken intact bulbs pose no real danger. However, if an incandescent bulb breaks, there may be some lead present in the solder or glass, which can be toxic if inhaled. I’m sure the amount present varies with different types and brands of bulbs.

Let’s compare and contrast the  Sylvania MSDS for incandescents to the Sylvania MSDS for CFLs, and we find that in both documents Section V. Health Hazards has the exact same statement:

“No adverse effects are expected from occasional exposure to broken lamps. As a matter of good practice, avoid prolonged or frequent exposure to broken lamps unless there is adequate ventilation. The major hazard from broken lamps is the possibility of sustaining glass cuts.”

But the MSDS of incandescents lists only lead as as a possible health hazard and recommends ventilating the area before cleaning, then placing the broken bulb in a closed container to prevent generating dust, whereas the MSDS for curly bulbs lists mercury, lead, phosphor, barium compounds, manganese, yttrium, aluminum oxide, and Krypton-85 as possible health hazards and then states, “Clean-up requires special care due to mercury droplet proliferation.”

So, be careful. Don’t break any bulbs if you can help it. If you do break a curly bulb, clean-up requires extra work, but you’ll probably live (as I did). Or, you can spend $23 or so per bulb and get shatter-resistant curly safety bulbs!

Back to the comments, Stacy McKenna and Arwen had questions about how “green” CFLs can be, if they contain toxic mercury. I found this Fox News article that mentions that incandescents use much more energy than CFLs, and the energy probably comes from burning coal, and burning coal releases mercury into the atmosphere.

“The EPA has estimated that the mercury in a CFL added to the mercury emitted from the electricity used to power it is still less than the mercury emitted from powering an incandescent bulb. So they’re still the better choice, the EPA’s Bergstein says.”

So, are CFLs going to save the planet? I dunno, but they do use less energy. If they are recycled properly, they might be a better bet than energy-hogging incandescents. Maybe in the near future we’ll have an affordable, mercury-free option, such as plasma bulbs or energy-efficient incandescents.