I have wanted to do this for the longest time. It's completely boring to anyone except me but I want to maintain a running list of every single chemical I apply on my skin or eat that I don't know about. It's fascinating how much chemicals dominate our lives.
I pretend that I am avoiding a ton of it by religiously reading labels to everything I consider buying. But I do end up getting stuff to eat or cosmetics that have unknown compounds in them. I don't know what the roles of these chemicals are or what they are capable of messing up in my body. I place my blind trust in the fact that they can't be excessively harmful because *someone out there* is definitely regulating them.
Fact is, there is very little regulation. Products that proudly proclaim that they are not been tested on animals actually scare me. I get all the arguments of PETA and animal rights activists and their gory pictures of animal suffering are shocking. But let's face it. At some point, we need to draw the line at just how much we want to compromise safety and health for humans in favour of "humane treatment of animals". Scientific research has primarily reached its current status because we could use animals to test our experiments.
We cannot emulate the living system otherwise. We cannot foresee the consequences of chemicals on living systems if we have never tested them on any. You cannot persuade me that reactions that you have seen on cell cultures come close to what happens in real life. My cynicism stems from first hand experience of the limitations of non-living systems for experimentation. It seems so paradoxical to me that we have such complicated and expensive clinical trials for drugs consumed by a minority sick population and yet NO regulation or trials for products that a vast majority of the general population uses and consumes daily and all the time. Prevention is definitely nowhere in the agenda here.
Another alternative is of course to use just edible and known natural substances in everything. While this is a logical and perfect alternative to the dilemmas of animal testing, it is also sometimes not very practical in today's world where products are global rather than local in their distribution and audience.
Anyway, I just ate some hummus:
It had "less than 0.5% of":
- Sorbic Acid
- Sodium Benzoate
- Phosphoric Acid
Preservatives. But why can't salt and olive oil suffice? Maybe I need to just make my own Hummus from
(e:libertad)'s awesome (secret?) recipe.
Yuck. However, just because its regulated in China doesn't mean anyone follows that. I mean I am sure lead is regulated in children's toys and melamine is not a legitamate protein filler - enough said.
I wonder if you would find that in any local bread. I think as soon as you need to transport bread large distances chemicals are required. Best thing would be self baked of local bakery.
Maybe we should drop out of our respective careers and start a chemical free food store.