God people are stupid. Say, among friends and family, how many furniture fires have you even heard of in all your life? I can't think of even one and this is from someone who as a kid intentionally set a shit ton of things on fire.
Say, among friends and family, how many furniture fires have you even heard of in all your life?
If we're going to go this way with the topic, we should try to do so in a manner supportive of those who have had, through no fault of their own, some bad luck.
People are stupid, this is stupid, the chemicals shouldn't be used.
But I really have to think that if something's been sprayed on all the furniture in the US for a couple of decades, and we're still arguing about what harm it does rather than about the otherwise inexplicable epidemic of children turning into hermaphroditic frogs, that the effects probably aren't too much to worry about.
Say, among friends and family, how many furniture fires have you even heard of in all your life?
Didn't someone set McMegan's ottoman on fire during a party? I seem to remember Becks mentioning it.
I am concerned that one of the story's subheds is "Toxic Roulette," a seemingly intentional nod to the hysteria-inducing yet beyond-flawed-all-the-way-to-made-up newspiece from the early 80s "Vaccine Roulette."
If I had a nickel for every time I accidentally started a fire, I'd have at least fifteen cents. I guess none of them involved furniture or were indoors.
I have been wondering about flame-retardants in the context of baby crib mattresses lately. It seems to me that, as babies don't smoke cigarettes, the mattress is only at risk of catching fire if everything else around it is already on fire. At that point, how much if anything is gained by the mattress being a little slower to start burning?
babies don't smoke cigarettes
Maybe some people's children aren't as cool as mine.
"Then we sit on our couch that can contain a pound of chemicals that's from the same family as banned pesticides like DDT."
DDT is pretty fucking safe. At the time of the ban it was being sprayed in obscene quantities as insects developed resistance. People failed to keel over dead. This fact has been part of the armamentarium of the anti-science bullshitters who set out to discredit all environmentalism by smearing Rachel Carson.
7: When does Baby Williams make the scene, Nathan?
7: According to the article, there's an expert witness in the pocket of Big Flame Retardant who goes around telling a made-up story about a baby who died when a dog knocked a lit candle into her crib. In the story, the mattress was flame-retardant, but the pillow wasn't, and it killed her. But the pictures he shows are of a baby who died in an extension cord fire, and there's no record of the flame-retardant status of any of the stuff around her.
9: I think it has been pretty well established that DDT isn't safe for birds. Anyway, nobody is going to support a movement to rename her bridge.
12: Flame-retardant couches killed the dinosaurs. Fact.
Is it wrong that the thing I found most frustrating about that article is that they didn't mention any of the specific chemicals? I want to go look up the structures, damn it.
At summer camp we used to write on the floor in bug spray and set it on fire, or spray tennis balls with bug spray and set them on fire and play ball hockey. The flaming ball would often roll under a bed and no mattresses ever burst into flames. As anyone who has tried to cook on a camping trip can tell you, it's often very hard to set things on fire (drought plagued regions excepted.)
But certain dinosaurs developed a resistance...
and now we call them "birds." And now you know the rest of the story.
12.last: nobody is going to support a movement to rename her bridge.
I would. Fuck that shit, it's the 9th Street Bridge. In fact, I literally just walked across the 7th Street Bridge minutes ago and had to look up whether it was the Carson or not (it's the Warhol). 6th, 7th and 9th*, a set of three beautiful matching bridges stupidly renamed in honor of zombies.
*The shot had the angle I liked, but gets the names of all the surrounding bridges wrong (it's the Allegheny, not the Mon).
I take the general opinion that infrastructure shouldn't be named after people. I'm looking at you, Helen Bentley Port of Baltimore.
19: Everybody calls them by the street name regardless.
I take the general opinion that infrastructure shouldn't be named after people.
Because that's valuable advertising you can sell to Chik-fi-la?
Chik-fi-la
Nice try, McDowell's. Consider yourself sued.
FLAME-RETARDANT COUCHES: THE SILENT KILLER
"It's better to burn up than to die from dust"
Because that's valuable advertising you can sell to Chik-fi-la?
Because most things already have perfectly good names, given to them by the people who built them, and/or denoting the relative geography thereof. Coming by, decades or centuries later, and slapping someone's name on it, just because you think that person is swell, is just super tacky to me.
At that point, how much if anything is gained by the mattress being a little slower to start burning?
If it's your mattress and furniture that's on fire, apparently not much. If you manufacture the compound that's added to the mattress, apparently a lot.
So what you mean is infrastructure shouldn't be RE-named after people.
20: Naming things after living people is especially risky. I think Pete Rose Way has officially been renamed, though the Ronald Reagan Cross-County Highway was intentional.
As comment 1 indirectly indicates, this article is part of a longer series. There's a lot of interesting stuff there, including more about the suspected health risks.
I wonder if you need a fireproof mattress if you have a hyperbaric chamber.
Via the League of Ordinary Gentlemen I see that the House Budget kills the American Community Survey. Conducted since the time of Jefferson, it apparently doesn't pass muster to them constitutionally. Never mind that the legislature at the time basically contained the folks who wrote the damn constitution. Oh and if ever there were a time that the general welfare clause made sense (even absent the census portion on ArtI!).
The American Community Survey was conducted since, like, 2000.
Joke's on you; I don't even own a baby.
Yeah, they only started doing it whenever they stopped doing the Long Form Census. Which is not to say that it isn't still a valuable program.
The long form has been around basically the whole time. Different q's though.
Also I misunderstood at least a few aspects... So... Never mind. Still isn't good though.
Apparently, it's a crime to knowingly put a falsehood on the ACS. Unlike your taxes, you can't just write down whatever numbers seem right.
37: I don't think that's actually true either. This seems to say the long form started in 1940, although I think it incorporated some questions that had previously been part of the regular census.
It does seem that even the 1790 census collected information not strictly necessary under the Constitution for redistricting, like age, sex, and race - it gives free white males 16 and up, free white males under 16, free white females, all other free persons, and slaves. Then the 1800 census (this one administered by James Madison) divided free whites into 5 age groups, and it just got more complicated from there until they spun off the long form in 1940 to reduce the burden.
Say, among friends and family, how many furniture fires have you even heard of in all your life?
My mom set a couch on fire once. Lit a candle with a match, shook the match, the match-head sailed off onto the couch, and then it burst into flames in really dramatic fashion. I kind of shouted something incoherent and froze and she had the presence of mind to grab a blanket and beat the flames out. I really hadn't thought that furniture could be so incredibly flammable.
Nice try, ese, but we can tell you're just shilling for the chemical industry.
I have a friend whose guitar has these cool looking burn patterns all over it. What happened was, this guy crashed at his house after hanging out, falling asleep while smoking on the couch. And the guitar was leaning up against the couch, so.
My upstairs neighbors in law school lit a couch/apartment on fire with a cigarette.
it apparently doesn't pass muster to them constitutionally. Never mind that the legislature at the time basically contained the folks who wrote the damn constitution.
Weren't some of the folks who wrote the constitution also OK with the Alien and Sedition Acts?
42: cheaper modern furniture can be tremendously flammable. It contains a lot of synthetic materials and foam - solid hydrocarbons.
Surely the point is that furniture catching fire was a problem when literally everybody smoked all the time. The fire code is all about matches and cigarettes for a reason. Why would you be futzing with matches on a sofa, if not to light up?
Of course, smokers have a reasonable expectation of their house not going up if they drop a ciggy too...
Given all that, surely it's a good thing that our babies, at least, are loaded with flame-retardants. The house may burn to the foundations, but the babies, Terminator-like, will walk out of the inferno unharmed.
Weren't some of the folks who wrote the constitution also OK with the Alien and Sedition Acts?
Sure, but 46.1 still has a point in that one current faction fetishizes "the founders" and would also likely be quite cool with new Alien and Sedition Acts.
Nice try, ajay, but we all know babies can't walk.
50: of course they can walk, they just can't be bothered most of the time. If they're in a burning house, you bet they'll ditch that "oh I can only crawl, please carry me everywhere" nonsense. They'll be sprinting out of there like little pudgy Usain Bolts.
Smoking roommate fell asleep on couch with a cigarette. Made a big hole in the couch, but apparently the couch was sufficiently flame retardant to keep it from going up entirely.
I think of furniture fires as very much a phenomenon of poverty. Much like kerosene-heater fires.
I don't know how accurate this perception is.
Friend of mine had a guest staying who fell asleep while smoking in bed. House burned down with guest in it. My friend was out at the time and came home to the aftermath. Her response was that from then on nobody smoked in her (next) house and if they did they weren't asked back.
53
I think of furniture fires as very much a phenomenon of poverty ...
Cheap furniture is more flammable?
55: Generally, I'd expect so. Actual pieces of wood don't catch fire very easily and you really don't see that type of material in cheap furniture. Also, the tighter the weave of the fabric, the harder it is to catch a flame. I don't know about the stuffing on padded furniture.
I wasn't thinking of cheap furniture, more of the fact that poverty tends to correlate with overcrowding, unsafe practices (heating with an oven, heating with kerosene heaters), very young kids being left home alone or with slightly older kids babysitting, utility bill issues (can't pay electric bill, therefore using candles, therefore more fires), more smoking, etc.
Actual pieces of wood don't catch fire very easily
Shit, I knew I would die because I shop at Ikea.
I remember during a long power outage in Durham there was a great deal of trouble with CO poisoning and that mostly it was people born in Mexico who had the trouble. Mexican house construction isn't as air tight and you can burn a small charcoal fire in the house without getting to toxic levels.