Those reusable “green” bags from the supermarket? It turns out half of them have unhealthy levels of lead. (And why wouldn’t they? They’re made in China.)

Despite the alarming results of TEI’s study, the toxicity of “environmentally friendly” bags has escaped real scrutiny from government officials within the bureaucracy.

One congressman did take notice.

A week after the results of the study were released, Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania sent a letter to the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Inez Tenenbaum, asking her to review the matter.

Two months later, Altmire received a reply. The gist was simple: Thanks for the concern, but the matter is out of the CPSC’s jurisdiction.

In other words, the one government agency charged with protecting consumers “against unreasonable risks of injuries associated with consumer products,” turned a blind eye when handed evidence of a product that could harm millions of consumers. While the CPSC isn’t all that powerful, it does, hold a large megaphone on consumer issues.

Altmire’s letter was also sent to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Neither one of those agencies acted.

Meanwhile, as the federal bureaucracy characteristically trudges along behind the rest of the country, some are starting to catch on to the dangers of reusable bags. The Tampa Tribune, for instance, did its own independent study of reusable bags in their community. Their results were the same as TEI’s – unhealthy levels of toxicity. Not only that, but the bags could actually be considered hazardous waste if they land in the garbage.

As a result of the Tribune’s study, the grocery chain Publix is revamping its line of reusable bags.

Another store to catch on was Wegmans, a major chain on the East coast. In early September, it replaced all its reusable bags after discovering some of them had up to 799 PPM.

On the other hand, some cities – fueled by their desire to “be green,” are pushing reusable bags by making plastic bags more of a hassle to consumers. Cities like D.C. and Seattle have implemented a tax on paper and plastic bags to incentivize consumers to go green.

They cost more than regular lights, but I have to say I really like the idea of solar Christmas lights and this company sells what looks like high-quality stuff. Good karma!

Harvard Business Review recently posted on the discovery that workers who nap are more efficient, correction in the original:

… When Sara Mednick, a former Harvard researcher, gave her subjects a memory challenge, she allowed half of them to take a 60 to 90 minute nap. The nappers dramatically outperformed the non-nappers. In another study, Mednick had subjects practice a visual task at four intervals over the course of a day. Those who took a 30 minute nap after the second session sustained their performance all day long. Those who didn’t nap performed increasingly poorly as the day wore on.

When pilots are given a nap of just 30 minutes on long haul flights, they experience a 16 percent increase improvement in their reaction time. Nonnapping pilots experience a 34 per cent decrease over the course of the flight. …

That might not seem to have anything to do with another study I read about, indicating that traumatic childhood experiences can have lifelong health effects, as per a massive research study on the effects of childhood trauma:

… Childhood adversity radically increases the risk for physical illnesses and disabilities, including heart and lung disease, autoimmune disease, liver disease, cancer (48 percent greater chance), diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, HIV, hepatitis, and chronic pain. It’s shocking to learn, though it probably shouldn’t be, that [individuals who experienced 6 or more categories of adverse events in childhood and young adulthood] die, on average, two decades earlier than those [who report none]. …

Is it likely that workplaces will start adopting naps? Nah. Looks too lazy. People just lay there, you know, not doing anything. Refusing to maximize their therbligs.

Is it likely that the health system is going to be revamped to deal with the reality that people’s unattended social traumas are actually damaging to their health? Frak, no. Neither the health system nor our government are even willing to face the fact that ambient pesticides and PCBs appear to contribute to obesity and diabetes.

The doctor who did the primary study on the health affects of childhood trauma is met with a mix of derision and inattention. When a major hospital chain tested the effects of running patients through a brief questionnaire that acknowledged their experiences on the scale developed for the study, they found dramatic reductions in the need for medical attention … that went away after two years without follow-up. The practice of investigating this part of a patient’s history, though it would have likely saved billions, was never adopted.

No, everybody needs to just suck it up. Deal. Walk it off. Take responsibility … for the caretakers who mistreated you or destroyed themselves while you watched, for the chemical companies who dump toxic crap in your food and water, for the job demands that take you to the brink of utter exhaustion.

We need a kinder way to deal with each other than this.

This is dangerous. Check your circuit breakers!

Consumer Reports put out a pretty useful guide, you may want to bookmark it.

I did not know this!

To recap, a person is allowed to decide when to start drawing Social Security payments from the government. You can get them at 62, at 70, or anyplace in between. There is an obvious attraction to getting it sooner rather than later, and about 45% of those eligible choose to start getting the checks on their 62nd birthday.

The reason that the other 55% hold off is that the older you are when you start, the bigger the checks become. The payments for a person starting at 70 are about 70% higher than for a person starting at 62. (But relatively few hold out all the way until 70. The median age is 63.)

That trade-off, forgoing some years of payments to make the size of those payments bigger, sets up an interesting little finance problem which I discussed a year ago with the help of some annuity prices I found on-line. (It’s a good post. Here’s another link.)

The main conclusion from my analysis was that, unless you know you are likely to shuffle off your mortal coil earlier than actuarially expected, you should hold out until age 70. In other words, most Americans get this wrong.
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