Though mercenary, it is understandable why companies that make labels "certifying" something safe, and activists raising money touting our doom, prey on expectant parents; they are easy targets. Being a new parent is scary. Books are basically useless and 'better safe than sorry' is a well-worn cliché.
Yet companies promoting "natural" and "organic" products are selling the idea that you need to be safer than safe, which makes no sense at all. To use a car analogy I like to use, when it comes to chemical safety we have already dropped the speed limit to 5 MPH in the interests of safety, and activists now claim we need to drop it to 1. We are so safe that we have forced government epidemiologists and academics chasing government funding to make increasingly specious statistical correlations between hazards and products. Toast, bacon, eggs, coffee, you name it and somewhere Center for Food Safety or Center for Science in the Public Interest is declaring another war on breakfast.
The latest chemophobia and mommy shaming occurred when "90 Day Fiance" star Paola Mayfield, who is expecting her first child, put up a photo of bleached hair on her Instagram account - along with her belly.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by ——-Paola M——— (@paola_mayfield) on Nov 18, 2018 at 12:11pm PST
Many were apoplectic at the notion that she should use a hair product while pregnant. One gent even mansplained to her, “Lay off the hair treatments (chemicals) when you’re pregnant, fool I’m a male and know this.”
Well, she is right not to worry, even if some guy thinks his genitals makes him qualified to know more about pregnancy than she does.
Parenting sites will promote concern about peroxide or ammonia, without noting that both of those are produced in our bodies - the dose makes the poison. The UK National Health Service says you should wear gloves and be in a ventilated room, which is exactly the case if you are not pregnant.
Sorry activists, bleaching hair will not cause any chemicals to cross the placental barrier and harm a child. Unless she is bleaching her hair 4,000 times per day for 25 years straight, which is the human equivalent of rat studies.
Mommy shaming pregnant women using chemophobia earns Paola Mayfield's Instagram followers three Grumpy Cronkites:
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