Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Hopping Down the Polyethylene Trail

Easter is just full of hazards. The Eldest and I attended a big egg hunt a few weeks ago, where you use the brightly colored, lead-tinged, made-in-China BPA vessels known as plastic Easter eggs.

I found myself surprised that in such an everything-conscious region as the Pacific Northwest, many parents had inserted naked jelly beans directly into the potentially toxic shells. I, oh-so-virtuously, had put only foil-wrapped candy inside, so as not to outrage any other toxin-averse couples.

Then I realized that foil is, of course, aluminum, a known contributor to Alzheimer’s. So that got me thinking about how I want my boys to take their eggs: with mild retardation, cancer, big breasts, or senile dementia?

These issues seem to come up fairly frequently. For instance, we try to never microwave anything plastic in our house. Not just big, bad plastics like polycarbonate. None of them. Not even No. 5, polypropylene, which I feel is a word I shouldn’t even have to read, much less know how to spell. So that brings me back to picking a poison. If I send my son to preschool with a slice of pizza for lunch, and it’s on a plastic plate, it might get nuked. So I put it in tin foil, knowing no one with a brain would ever even accidentally microwave tin foil (well, except that one time in college).

Again, I’m choosing Alzheimer’s over toddler man-breasts and endocrine disruption. And cut-up kids, since I opted not to send my kid in with a big glass container mimicking Tupperware.

This is simply exhausting. Does anyone else miss the days when all that mattered was keeping your kids out of the streets and their ride-on toys off the steps?

And do any of these environmental hazards really matter when I actually let my young children consume Peeps? Many Peeps? –Jillian O’Connor

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