The title of this blog is the cheerful headline to an article I came across this evening. I really wish I hadn't. Turns out it's not just alien abduction and toxic baby bottles we have to fear. Apparently the VERY seats we're using to keep our babies safe in cars are ALSO FREAKING TOXIC. GAWD HELP US!! Seriously WHAT isn't toxic or dangerous or habit forming these days. I apologize for the excessive us of capitalization but this is as CLOSE to screaming as I can get at this moment. The little Diva is fast asleep and really she doesn't need to wake up to the sound of her mother hysterically ranting about the toxicity of FREAKING EVERYTHING!!! Especially considering I've already 'put her to bed' twice since we got home from our lovely visit with Dadoos and Dadda.
Part of my issue with every new study that comes out is that I:'m already paranoid enough about the little Diva's well-being. I always thought I'd be a bit of a nervous freak-show as a parent... but then the Diva decided to arrive 3 months early and my paranoia and germaphobia and general fear of pretty much everything was thrown into overdrive. I really don't need to be terrified of her car seat as well. Thankfully the one that we do have measures low on the threat scale. We hit a 0.3 score. The higher the score the more SCARY the seat. There's one on the list that hits a 4.6! A 4.6!! How scary is that, bromine, lead, chlorine and some other unnamed substances of terror!!!!!! Yes, yes my exclamation use is out of control...
The article in question (I have a link after my rant) points you to a list of the seats studied... obviously I ended up there in order to deduce that we scored a 0.3 with our Graco. What further rankled my feathers (um yes a weird bird reference), was the fact that the website has a disclaimer that basically says the following: "Even though we can tell you that all these scary things are in your seat, we can't actually tell you what the actual exposure level/danger to your wee one is".
So really after being terrified by the title, wishing our chair scored a 0 (only one did and it is a booster seat), then realizing I still didn't know how scared I should be - I turned to my blog to get the frustration of out my system. I apologize for those of you who are now terrified and running to grab your chairs to see where they rank on the list! I hope you're not the 4.6er....
As it is - we do need to get the little Diva a convertible seat in the near future so we'll be doing our homework and trying to find a less noxious seat. I already spent a huge chunk of time making sure we only purchased BPA Free products for the little Diva before a study came out that mentioned crazy amounts of un-regulated and possibly more terrifying chemicals in the BPA free plastics. At that point I thought - AW DAMMIT and I went out and purchased glass bottles. Her toys are a mix of BPA free and "I'm not sure what's in it" plastics. She only has one bottle a day in order to get her vitamins in so here's hoping there aren't too many chemicals leaching out of everything she's putting in her mouth.
What is a parent to do... seriously? WHAT do you do with all this terrifying information? I'm off to bed and hopefully no nightmares about chemical leaching. Here is the link as promised:
More than half of car seats contain at least one toxic chemical - Parentcentral.ca
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