I'm tackling part of the issue of food toxin remediation with my new venture, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com). It's a modified oat fiber supplement that selectively traps BPA, PFAS, and plasticizers in the gut and reduces levels in the blood serum.

The funding for this is tough, though. Everyone loves the idea, but it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works over brand building and marketing. I've had to be very scrappy. Hopefully this will change in the future as we build momentum and awareness, but for right now it's tooth and nail.

This is precisely why I happily pay for an annual subscription to ConsumerLab[0]. It's largely just for supplements and a few functional foods, but with a tiny staff they are doing more work to help the public on the unregulated medicine market than the entire FDA, IMHO.

[0]https://www.consumerlab.com/

Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680>

The appropriate solution is legislation.

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale.

I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like this.

From that perspective, all of these services that rate products still place all the onus on the individual consumer. What would be really "luxury" in the modern context would be an online marketplace that vetted every product and whose primary product was trust, as opoosed to logistics and convenience. I'd much rather pay $150/yr for a service that vetted its products and took a week to deliver them, than to have a bunch of worthless or dangerous junk delivered the next day.

> This was lead poisoning. ... Nobody knew.

Good article. But just to note, lead was already a known poison at the time when it was added to gasoline. Significant concerns were raised. Production was even halted for a while in the US due to health incidents.

Equally as large and interesting is the industry of targeting and subverting consumer watchdog groups. Wirecutter's infiltration and takeover is a fascinating example.

If the incentives of private business are what got us in this health crisis, why should private business be trusted to get us out of it?

The solution here is the Government regulating and managing the situation. It has been recognized for a century - if not more - that the onus is on the State.

The FDA, FTC, EPA, etc should be involved here.

The trend of making these medical tests cheaper and easier to obtain is going to result in a lot of positive change. Certainly for individuals and hopefully the anonymized data helps get the spotlight on larger trends.

One of those things where it’s important to make a concerted effort to limit risk.

…but then also to stop worrying after reasonable steps were taken because it’s an endless rabbit hole

This reminds me a bit of a private group that did a big study (I thought in SFBA) looking at the amount of microplastics in different stuff, for example delivered food. Just thinking about it because of the startup he mentioned and I was wondering if it was them, but can’t find the article now. I know it was discussed at length here.

Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633

When I was a baby we lived virtually directly under the Sydney Harvour Bridge, I got lead poisoning as a result of runoff from the bridge. The combination of leaded petrol and leaded paint runoff poisoned the soil in playgrounds and the area more generally.

My case and probably those of others lead to a huge cleanup of the bridge.

My life has been absolutetly plagued with chronic health and "developmental" problems. Neurodivergence and other conditions litter my family tree, but they seem to effect me much more severely than they do most of my relatives.

I often find myself wondering these days if my life would have featured significantly less hardship were it not for the lead poisoning.

If you have ever visited the ruins of Pompeii, you might have seen all the lead pipes that provided water to the city. I wonder how that affected the health of the citizens back then.

>Only a business with this as its core competency is capable of the breadth and depth required for this Herculean task.

It doesn't have to be a business, and it absolutely should not be. Preventing poisoning of people, animals, and the environment is something capitalism has proven utterly incapable of, and in fact (literally) violently opposed to.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the government level. The goal is societal benefit, not profit.

“Blood and Soil”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil

This article’s just trying to hype a stealth startup, but beware of those selling you the Herrenvolk. I’m all about mitigating negative pollution but there are plenty of things in nature that are bad for you, too.