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In-Depth Product Review: White Noise Generators (aka Sound Generators, Sound Machines): Marpac Sleepmate/Sound Screen 580A 980A DOHM-SS DOHM-DS and Alternative Sleep Aids

Marpac Sleepmate/Sound Screen 980A White Noise Generator

BACKGROUND

Do you have trouble sleeping sometimes?
Does your spouse snore?
Do you live in a unit with thin walls and loud neighbors next door?
Does your baby have trouble sleeping, or do you want to be able to calm your baby down with the push of a button?

What is white noise, and why does white noise help people sleep?

White noise is a consistent noise evenly distributed throughout all human-hearable frequencies. However, some noise is better than others. Humans tend to pick up higher frequencies better to the point where plain white noise can sound hissy and unnatural. White noise that has been tuned to deliver more low-frequency noise is called pink noise. And below pink noise is brown noise, which stresses those low frequencies even more. Pink and brown noise are perceived by human ears as being flatter, with less hiss.¹

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In-Depth Product Review: Megahome Countertop Water Distiller, Glass Collection (White Enamel or Stainless Steel Finish)

Megahome Countertop Water Distiller with Glass Jar

As the New York Times puts it, “Experts now say that no amount of lead in the blood is safe, and that even low levels of exposure can harm cognitive function and have other adverse effects.”¹

The effects of lead are irreversible. Lead bioaccumulates–meaning it does not get flushed out with urine or feces. Instead, lead embeds itself in your bones, brain, kidneys, and other organs and causes lots of problems: muscle pain, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, anemia, behavior disorders, visual impairment, numbness, abdominal pain, depression, and.. well you get the idea. Even tiny amounts of lead decrease IQ and increase behavioral problems in kids, and adults aren’t immune either.² For example, an increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl = a decrease of 2.6 IQ points in school-aged children regardless of whether they were in poor, middle, or upper-class households.³ A decrease of IQ points means worse performance at school/work and lower lifetime earnings, among other things.

Even though scientists have known that there is no “safe” level of lead exposure since the 1920s, the government has been slow to act. For example, federal law (the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974, as amended throughout the years) defined “lead free” drinking water pipes to mean “up to 8% lead” from 1974 to 2011. After 2011, “lead free” meant “up to 0.25% lead.”⁴ (On what planet should “lead free” mean “up to 8% lead”? Would you drink “urine free” water that was 8% urine?) For pre-1974 homes, lead limits varied; some local governments were still allowing 100% lead pipes. On a related note, lead paint for residential construction was not banned until 1978, and gasoline-makers were legally adding lead to gas until 1986.⁵

Flint is famous for failing to keep lead out of its drinking water, but in December 2016, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city’s contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.⁶ More than 5,000 water systems across the country are violating rules meant to keep lead out of drinking water.⁷ U.S. water infrastructure has been decaying all over the country for decades: in Sebring, Ohio, the city waited five months to warn pregnant women and children to stop drinking their lead-contaminated water, and Washington D.C. waited three years to warn its residents after lead spiked to as much as 20 times the federally-approved limit.⁸

Worse, lead is only one of many different toxic substances that can make it into drinking water supplies. The same New York Times article referenced above also talks about how tap water testing can be spotty in terms of geography and in time: in Brick Township, New Jersey, almost no homes exceeded the EPA limit for lead in 2011. Three years later, nearly half of the tested 34 homes exceeded the limit. Affected homeowners drank contaminated water for three years thinking they were safe.

And then there’s this:

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Blue Light Special: How to get more sleep in one easy step

Humans have adapted to Earth's 24-hour day/night cycle. — Humans have adapted to Earth’s 24-hour day/night cycle.

Everyone knows that sleep deprivation is costly. You can do worse on school or employment exams, gain weight, become more forgetful, become depressed, prematurely age your body, lose some of your sex drive, or even crash your car if you aren’t getting enough sleep, because drinking under sleep deprivation is like driving drunk.¹ In fact, a recent Harvard Medical School study estimates that sleep deprivation costs the U.S. $63.2 billion per year.²

Some causes of sleep deprivation are hard to stop–if you’re an airline pilot that changes time zones a lot, that’s hard to fix, short of a career change. But one big cause of sleep deprivation is easy to stop: blue light.

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A Post-Plastic Home: Known and Unknown Dangers of Plastic, and Alternatives to Plastic Food Storage, Shower Curtains, Water Bottles, and Other Household Products

SUMMARY

Plastics are nowhere near as safe as you might think. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the US EPA only tests chemicals when it is provided evidence of harm; the EPA has essentially allowed the chemicals industry to regulate itself for the other 60,000+ chemicals on the market. Even in the food industry, federal agencies don’t strictly regulate plastics; what is declared a “safe” plastic today may change tomorrow, and “BPA-free” plastic might be made with substances that are even worse than BPA (see below). I would suggest replacing all plastic in your life when reasonably possible. Sometimes there is no reasonable alternative, but often there is.

Why should we care that so many household items are made out of plastic?

On an environmental level, plastics are often made from crude oil. Politically, reliance on crude oil leads to twisted relationships with some of the world’s worst actors. Environmentally, there are direct negative impacts from drilling for crude oil on habitats and water quality due to leaks and other issues, as well as carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, many plastics degrade slowly and thus persist for a very long time in the environment and in landfills. There are huge swaths of relatively high-concentration plastic patches floating around the oceans. Birds often mistake colorful plastic for food and ingest harmful quantities of plastic. For instance, over 90 percent of Midway Island’s Laysan Albatrosses have plastic in their stomachs.¹ That’s a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so imagine what large-continent coastal wildlife goes through! The plastics can perforate animals’ vital organs and spread harmful toxins, among other things.

On a personal level, plastics have been linked to a wide variety of ailments, ranging from relatively minor impacts like increased blood pressure to major impacts like impacting children’s cognitive development.² Sometimes you hear people reason that if plastic were so dangerous, big companies would not use it, because it would open them up to massive lawsuits.

This reasoning is faulty. First, our scientific understanding grows with time, so what was considered safe in the past might not be considered safe now.

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