Extremism

"Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me. Just say you never met me, I'm runnin' underground with the moles, digging holes."
-Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"

Read an article this morning about lead present in Christmas lights. Lead has been in the news a lot lately, due to high levels of it being found in items from China; of that, most of the attention has been given to toys, due to the holiday season.
Before I go off here, allow my to say first that I am not saying that we should not take care of what we expose ourselves to, particularly children and the elderly, and that we shouldn't take reasonable precautions. Having said that, the advice Dr. Trasande gives in the article of "leaving lights off the tree entirely" is just another example of extremist, knee-jerk reactionism. If people like this had their way, we would all live in sterile environments, so our bodies would become accustomed to absolutely nothing, and we would all start dying from the common cold. Either that, or all of the viruses would quickly mutate (remember, these are living things which do adapt) due to our over-use of anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, antibiotics, (which is already happening), anti- whatever else, and effectively have another plague on our hands.
Lead is hazardous-this is true. At one time, pipes were made of lead, it was in gasoline, pencils, and various other common dyes and pigments. We learned of its' danger, and mostly eliminated it, particularly from those items that children may be in contact with. However, it still has legitimate uses, such as (as mentioned) stabilizing the PVC insulation so it doesn't crack and chip away. Had these companies not done that, conspiracy theories would fly that they're doing so 'so everybody would constantly have to buy new light sets so they could make more money!' . Given that, Sylvania had the best response (from the article) "'Holiday lights are electrical appliances. We encourage consumers to exercise common sense by keeping holiday lights and other electrical products away from the hands and mouths of children,' the company wrote." Then, GE's response- "'We can make a fairly obvious common sense observation: Lights are not toys, should not be handled by children, and are not subject to the same standards for lead,' wrote GE." And here's the clincher- "'The CPSC guidelines you refer to are for products that would regularly be handled by children.'" Unfortuantely, there's not much common about common sense anymore. I suppose that's the bigger issue here. Then again, at one time common sense told us that lead pipes were ok. Screw it, I'm going to go live in an igloo.