Flame retardents saved Miss C's life!
After my mom died of lung cancer I inherited my mom's sheets. I have not had to buy new sheets in over 7 years. Unfortunately many of them have cigarette burns in them. I have scanned one of them to illustrate my story. When I was a teenager I would beg and plead with my mom not to smoke in bed, as she regularly would set the sheets on fire. She didn't give a shit.Had not her mattress and nightgown been permeated with flame retardent chemicals she and I would have died along with many of our apartment neighbors. Flame retardent may penetrate our skin and be present in our urine, but I am here to prove that they save many lives.
When I was very young there were often children, at the many elementary schools I attended, who had been badly burned when their night clothes caught on fire. There has been a recent hue and cry by a group of activists pushing to ban flame retardents. I have been hearing it all over the news and it has me very worried. I do not think they have a clue in hell how dangerous this would be.
posted by Miss Carnivorous @ 8:19 PM
2 Comments:
so sorry about your mom. while i don't recall begging my mom to stop smoking in bed (although i know she did), i certainly spent a huge amount of little-kid-energy begging her to just goddamn QUIT smoking. she didn't give a shit either. what did a 10- or 12-year-old know?
but she eventually quit, many, many years later.
she died of lung cancer as well. one of the last things she said to me was to apologize for not listening to "the little girl who begged and begged and cried her heart out to get me to quit smoking." Because, my mother said, "she was right and I was wrong."
fortunately, i had forgiven my mother long before that. the apology wasn't necessary. i wish she had known that.
It's one of the most addictive substances on this earth. Tobacco was precious to the Native Americans for a reason and it is their ultimate revenge on the White man. I can our moms slack for killing themselves off early, but i would not have been so forgiving of them had they gone out in a firey blaze!
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