podcast 420 - Stink - Part 1

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Summary

Credit: Eric Tolbert


Paul Wheaton and  Jocelyn Campbell review the movie Stink, a documentary by Jon Whelan, about chemicals and toxins that are in consumer products.

Paul and Jocelyn start the discussion from the historic Florence Building in Missoula, MT.  Before they actually begin reviewing  the movie Paul and Jocelyn mentions that he will be recording an upcoming podcast with some of his Patreon followers in the near future and give a "shout-out" to some current Patreon supporters.

Jocelyn starts out by pointing out that by the end of the documentary that Jon is advocating that people make better choices in their personal choices, that the manufacturers are more transparent in disclosing the ingredients and chemicals in their products and that the government also do a better job of protecting the public.  Jocelyn and Paul are surprised that the movie proves while people think the government must be testing and restricting things that are for sale to protect the public there really are no regulations restricting chemicals in products.

The documentary does focus primarily on what contributes to cancer because Jon's wife passed away at a young age after contracting breast cancer and passing away in 2009.  The movie points out statistically in 1960 one in twenty women would experience breast cancer and the current ratio is now one in eight.

The premise of the documentary is that after his wife, Heather, passed away and Jon because a single parent to his two young daughters gift giving was not one of Jon's strengths. Jon ordered pajamas online for a Christmas present for his daughters and when they opened the pajamas there was a strong chemical odor to them, in other words "they stunk". Jon then sets about to find out what chemicals have been applied to the pajamas.

Jon starts his attempt to determine what has been applied to the clothing by talking with the company and gets vague and unsatisfactory answers. Jon attempts a conversation with the Chinese manufacturer and ultimately ends up having the pajamas tested by a lab. The lab returns results that the flame retardant being applied had been banned 30 years before.

Paul relays information from the movie that flame retardant materials are in almost everything that is in our homes. Turns out in the 70's most home fires were caused by careless smoking. The government required big tobacco to make self-extinguishing cigarettes but people didn't like the taste so big tobacco pressured the government to change the law to make household items flame resistant instead of the cigarettes.

Jocelyn relates how the filmmaker researches the Cancer Act of 1971, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and how the government actually does not require manufactures to list any ingredients in products if they are lumped under the heading "Fragrance".

The documentary also highlights the case of a high school freshman who is highly allergic to ingredients in Axe body spray. The kid was hospitalized three times in a week from allergic reactions to people around him wearing Axe. The film also covers a reporter who had her blood tested for chemicals as an experiment and discovered that she had 175 chemicals linked to cancer, 210 linked to heart disease and 196 linked to birth defects currently in her blood. The documentary also discussed how infants were being born "pre-polluted" by chemicals they could only be exposed to through the blood of the mother.

Paul circles back to the teenager with the allergic reaction to Axe body spray and how when the parent contacted the company the company refused to disclose the chemicals in the Axe fragrance so they were unable to find out what was triggering the boy. The company insisted it was not their problem because they were complying with all Federal laws.

Paul and Jocelyn discuss in some depth how the movie covers the concept of fragrance, which by law does not have to disclose what components make up "fragrance". Jocelyn discusses how some women are starting to make their own make up so they can control the ingredients.

Paul and Jocelyn finish up the first segment of the podcast discussing "natural" beauty vs. societal pressure to use make up.

Relevant Threads

Florence Building Missoula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Hotel_(Missoula,_Montana)
Stink the Movie: https://stinkmovie.com/

Building a Better World in Your Backyard (Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys): http://buildingabetterworldbook.com/
Paul Patreon for Podcasts: https://www.patreon.com/paulwheaton/posts
Paul Patreon for Video: https://www.patreon.com/pwvids/posts


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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Suleiman, Karrie, and Sasquatch
Bill Crim
Kerry JustTooLazy
anonymous
Wade Luger
Jocelyn Campbell
havokeachday
thomas adams
Sasquatch
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
Dominic Crolius
Eivind W. Bjørkavåg
Seth Gregory
Bill Erickson
David Ingraham
Michelle Martin
G Cooper
Miroslav Ultrama
Matthew Johnson
Lisa Goodspeed
Dylan Butler
Kyle Neath
Penny McLoughlin
HL Tyler
Dana Martin
Keith Kuhnsman
Mark
Arturo Ceron
Eric Tolbert
Mehron Kugler
Sean Benedict

Hi, people.

I tried my best to watch this movie online but aparently i am not able to view it because i am from EU... If anyone has a link to watch or to download the movie i would be very thankful...
Cheers, Klemen

Oh, that's too bad, Klemen. Did the main Stink website (linked above) provide other options for you?

Thanks, Bill, for ALL of your help with the podcasts!

Here's the no make-up thread I mentioned, and it was Alicia Keys who made the news by going without make-up!

And I just posted about an article that refers to and gives even more examples like the movie Stink. Though since it's a cider press toxic gick topic, I've posted about it here.

Hi, Jocelyn...
I tried amazon prime, netflix, google play, vudu (theirs page doesnt load at all). I just contacted them via stinkmovie website to see if there are any possibilities...  will see

Weee!

They replied (from official Stink" movie website) and forwarded me to vimeo.

vimeo.com/ondemand/stink

There i was able to get it!

Cheers,
Klemen

I was talking with someone about this and she basically didn't believe anything I said.  She wears a great deal of makeup, always trying something new she has seen on some youtube vid.  So many of us just don't WANT to know there could possibly be anything wrong with products we use. We want to live in a bubble where we don't have to face anything bad. We don't want to know if something is harmful. We want what we want!  And don't let anyone dare say something might be bad for us.                                                     We also think in America we are somehow protected against products that could be harmful, after all we have rules and regulations.
I have been one of those consumers. I fell for the propaganda that we have it better in America than any other country, and we love to point out how other countries have such toxic products. That it is OTHER countries that don't protect their citizens.
WE have been so lied too.
We have to be more aware of what we use.  Nothing is going to change unless we stop believing the hype and stop buying products without checking them out first. I know that is not an easy thing to do.   Since we are lied to about so many things.  As the saying goes .......buyer beware.  

I am from EU and althoug it is said in the movie that we banned significantly more chemicals (to be used in products) than US i am far from feeling safe.

When i go to the store it became a habbit of first reading the ingredients in the microtext at the back of the package...
Sometimes reading the front shiny part of the package and then the microtext labelling feels like a joke :-).
A year ago i checked hazelnut spread (not exactly but the title suggested very firmly that it is maid from hazelnuts). Anyway the price didnt seem right - at the back i checked the text and it said that it contains mighty 0.1 grams of hazelnuts - come on, is there even one whole hazelnut in this glass. This is almost hazelnut in traces :-).

Anyway - in stores it helps to:
-first read the back text. (Or ONLY read the back text)
-if it feels like something  to good to be true, it probably is

I watched this movie on Netflix last night (within the US). The implications of the movie are pretty horrifying, and it's clear there will not be any disclosures from companies as to what "toxic gick" they're putting in fragrances; either consumers have to pay for private lab tests or there has to be overwhelming pressure towards political people to get this fixed.

I think the most shocking part was the information about how babies are born pre-polluted.

I certainly will regard fragrances with heightened awareness.

Thank you Paul & Jocelyn for reviewing this movie. I don't think it would have come to my attention otherwise.

When I built my other house I had many options and I tried to think of situations and reality. One place I got incredible grief was for not putting polyurethane up on the white pine ceilings.

Why would you?

No, not just because of toxic gick, but what are you preventing? I mean honestly, when was the last time you scrubbed your ceilings clean? That house is 25 years old, not once did I have a leaking ceiling so it is not stained, just a nice bead board white pine ceiling. But that is just NOT what is done. My wife's grandparents told me that, then proceeded to tell me how hard it was for them to Poly their log home's ceilings. WHY DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? Yeah, I will sign up for that. Toxic Gick, hard work, more money...just to cover beautiful raw wood.

I just don't get it. Why not think through a situation, and decide if something is even needed or not?

I cannot believe I welded for 30 years. Take a look at a career welder and everyone of us is bald. The heavy metals just kills us (literally)

See all that smoke/vapor?  You absorbed all that gick.  No surprise you're sick now.  My husband has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, which is strongly linked to exposure to toxic chemicals.  We both worked in motion picture special effect shops, which used several kinds of toxic products and where the culture of machismo made it uncool to protect oneself (or one's employees) from exposure to these poisons.

the movie is now public