Helicopter parents rejoice - when you are not slathering on chemicals to make sure your cherubs never get any sunshine and scraping off deadly pathogens with antibacterial soap, you can further protect your offspring by insuring they catch no debilitating diseases from...a garden hose.

Sure, millions of years of evolution and drinking water a lot more polluted than the municipal kind didn't kill humans but our ancestors did not have to contend with evil BPA.

What, you think BPA is just more health scare journalism during slow news weeks when no miracle vegetable stories are available?  Why do you hate children so much?

Jeff Gearhart, of the Ecology Center in Michigan says, “I know I drank out of a hose all summer when I was growing up. What kid doesn’t?” but he doesn't think the government should allow it. “Gardening products, including water hoses, are completely unregulated and often fail to meet drinking water standards that apply to other products, yet again demonstrating the complete failure of our federal chemicals regulatory system.Our children will never be safe until we reform our laws to ensure products are safe before they arrive on store shelves.”


Call child protective services - that hose is not organic!!  Photo: Shutterstock.com

I wonder how humankind made it this long without government-regulated, organic garden hoses.

Their research found one hose - seriously, one hose out of 90 - that had water with lead content higher than the federal drinking water standard, and that merited scaring a whole lot of concerned parents who are rightly confused about the difference between science, health and goofballs fomenting panic.  This is what a generation of people who went into science because they want to be Rachel Carson has given us.

And don't use a PVC watering hose, use a natural rubber one - unless you are one of the approximately 100 million people have have PVC pipes bringing water to the hose anyway.  You're screwed.



Patty Davis, spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission told Joanna Foster of the New York Times that they would never recommend that any person drink from a garden hose - they are apparently that dangerous. “The real health concern here is bacterial contamination. Garden hoses sit outside and bake in the sun. Anything can get in them, and it’s a perfect environment for all sorts of microbial communities.”

Look for 'if even one child can be saved' pleas for more legislation to be issued soon.   Garden hoses are just too dangerous to be allowed to lay around the yard.