Don’t Fear the Truth

Shane April 26th, 2008

Image by Chealion via FlickrBPA is a chemical used in polycarbonate (plastic) containers. There is growing evidence that this chemical causes problems in humans.

Canada is going to ban the import of these bottles. This was enough to convince me to switch our baby bottles to glass, after finding out our bottles were made of polycarbonate. If you have ever had a baby, you know that once they get used to a certain nipple, you will have a hard time switching them to another type of bottle… unless you get lucky enough to find another bottle type with a nipple similar enough that the baby does not notice the change.

Earlier this week, after reading the article stating Canada was going to stop the import of these bottles, I started looking online for glass versions of the bottles we have, called Dr Browns Bottles. These are unique bottles, and reduce baby gas immensely. I found out that you could now get glass versions of Dr Brown’s bottles, so I started checking online stores. Amazon had one seller - sold out. eBay had no one selling any of these bottles.

I spent an hour and a half looking at probably fifty online stores - none of them had these bottles. They were all sold out. It appeared that Dr Brown just released these bottles about a month ago, and with this article hitting yahoo.com, people had bought out every store on the net. Amazing.

I kept checking, started looking for other bottles that might be similar to ours. No local stores even carried glass bottles at all. Very frustrating. If you have kids, trying feeding them with a bottle and wondering if your baby is drinking something harmful to them.

This morning I went online to check again - and found some! Sellers on eBay had them! Hey wait a minute… what the hell is up with these prices?

eBay sellers, and one person on Amazon, are price gouging these bottles. Not just a little either. These bottles sell for $12.99 for a set of two. We use about 10 bottles total, including what we send to our daycare. So I expected to pay about $60 plus shipping for 10 bottles.

Here is the list of eBay sellers that have these bottles.

Six bottles = $109. Four bottles = $59. Two bottles = $34!

I am so, so tired of capitalism. Anything for a buck. Now, if someone gouges a Playstation when they are new, and someone wants to pay $1000 for one, fine. In my opinion, this is different. People are scared, and worried that their *babies* are in danger and these freaks decide not to just make a few dollars on the short supply… they triple the price? A few dollars more I could see, but this is no different, in my opinion, than the company that charged $8 for bottled water at the second Woodstock concert. Disgusting.

We got lucky. The Babies-R-Us store an HOUR away had 11 packages, so we now have the glass bottles. I had thought I would buy the remaining bottles and put them on eBay for the price I paid, just to piss off those scum bags making money off of fear, but then realized I was just taking bottles away from someone locally that might need them.

Is this the end of the world? No. But can we have a little humanity please? Nothing is more precious than a baby. At the right, take a look at my 9 month old daughter. Yes, there is nothing any better about my daughter than anyone else’s daughter, but sometimes I think people need to relate to things visually. There are a lot of people out there just like me, who have bundles of joy just like this little rascal here. We deserve to be safe, and that safety comes before profit. I don’t give a shit if your portfolio drops a little because some plastics company’s stock lost value now that they can’t produce cancer causing plastic. We all deserve to be safe, from the newborn baby up to the retired great-grandmother. Is it too much to ask that safety comes before profit?

And the question of the day is: do you think the corporations knew about dangers of BPA when they started using it? Because in case you didn’t know, the chemical companies do not have to prove something is safe to be put on the market - someone else has to prove that they cause problems in humans. Since you can’t test on humans, that is pretty hard to do until the chemical has been around for quite a few years, and you can start to look for trends, etc. Is it coincidental that after 30 years of use, there is growing evidence that Aspartame is dangerous… and lookie here, Splenda is on the market, ready to take over.

This is not the way it should be. Fuck profit, fuck corporatism, and fuck anyone involved in this shit. We can’t even make cigarettes illegal though when we know that they cause cancer, what are our chances of changing how chemicals are allowed into the market so that we can know our kids are safe with the stuff they come into contact every day?

About Zero. The European Union, Canada, and California are all making these chemicals illegal because they will put a ban on something without conclusive evidence. Is it not better to remove something that seems questionable, until it can be proven safe, than it is to say “well until you can prove that it causes cancer in humans, we will continue to make money.”

I’m moving to Canada. Screw this shit.

• Business , Health
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