Hey Tildoes, my partner and I have been navigating a broad, government level health challenge and I was hoping to pick the hivemind for help on navigating it.

As some of you may have seen in articles posted here, there was a massive fire at the lithium ion battery plant in Moss Landing a few months ago. It ended up spewing a slough of nasty chemicals into the air, which inevitably landed in the surround agricultural fields and waterways. My partner was in Australia when the fire occured, thank god, but was still freaking out about downstream effects. There have been studies from a 3rd party group from UC Davis and San Jose State - that found elevated levels of heavy metals - however those have been downplayed by local agencies claiming there are not major impacts and that distribution was surface level. With everything we know about state and federal agencies oversight, sometimes they are less than transparent about reporting toxic impact factors - like what happened in Hinkley and was popularized by the movie Erin Brockovich. However today the California Certified Organic Farmers put out their own update and press release. They summarized what has happened and seem to be endorsing the safety of the farms they have certified in the area.

So here is the rub: Federal, state, county, and local agencies have determined there is not significant contamination, the CCOF has agreed with these agencies, and my partner is still uncomfortable eating local produce. It feels a bit like we're back in covid times, and she is looking for cherry picked studies to justify strict behavioral and consumption restrictions within our household. We have always agreed to "shift our risk tolerance according to data" and now - with the Trump administration and a general distrust of our fed/state agencies - she's advocating we continue to avoid these foods until there is "definitive proof" that the food is safe.

I'm kind of at a loss of what do to. On one hand, it's a minor thing to change where we get our food. Food systems are complex and we can kind of get it from anywhere. On the other hand, I love my time at our farmers markets, experimenting with new foods, and supporting our local community. I also think the more obscure the process from farm to shelf, the more possibility for health/employee/environmental shenanigans by the producers. To me buying broadly "American" or "Mexican" kale doesn't mean we aren't going to have similar or worse impacts to our food.

I'm trying to find a reasonable middle ground or a bellwether indicator we can use as a go/no-go, but every time I think we've agreed on one it feels like the goal posts have been moved. Do any of you have similar issues or possible navigated differences in risk tolerance during Covid well? If so, how did you do so? I know this is a bit of a random thread, but I'd love to hear what you think!

The last time I ran off to see a doctor was about 10 years ago when I got a concussion shortly after graduating college. After that, I have visited optometrists and dentists, but not an MD. I had my own insurance at my first big boy job after school, but I didn't schedule any appointments [early 20s with plenty of other priorities] before I got fired after a couple years and lost employer coverage (ain't nobody got money for COBRA nonsense).

After that, I've been rather chronically underemployed and thus avoided the medical system entirely (with the above exceptions of my eyes & teeth) to avoid being told to go fix expensive problems [and not wanting the monthly drain of premiums].

Anyway, I (for better and worse) had an hours cut that got me eligible for Medicaid. I'd like to know what to say to get a head-to-toe physical (including mental health) with minimal hassle and needing to re-clarify what I want. Mental health-wise, I can state a suspected primary complaint: undiagnosed ADD due to lacking the H as a child as well as seasonal depression [the chronic depression was entirely downstream from the abovementioned ADD].

However, I have no idea what to tell the doctor to look for physically. Probably should get some kind of comprehensive blood screening done. Make sure my hormones, iron, etc… are all within normal bounds. Perhaps I have some conditions that should've spooked me into seeing a doctor five years ago, but I'm still alive and well, so they're no longer causes for alarm [even if they should be].

I do hope one of you thinks of a better title or a more coherent structure for the overall post.

This question was inspired by a comment chain about PFAS in Gore-Tex jackets under a different post here, but it's been a bit of a simmering question for me.

When reading through that thread, my immediate reaction was something along the lines of the following.

Unless you're directing traffic in Seattle or Scotland, wouldn't the amount of time you'd wear the jacket be too little to have meaningful exposure? It's not like you're walking into an oven where the polymers would break down from heat. Further, if it's GoreTex-appropriate weather, you'll near-certainly have additional clothing between your skin and the GoreTex.

I was bored at work today, so I had plenty of time for rumination and introspection. What I found so far is that my instinctive skepticism toward health-conscious rhetoric has these primary sources:

1. I listened to Stronger by Science's six-hour deep dive on aspartame. Their eventual conclusion is that aspartame does cause bladder cancer in rats & mice, but the equivalent doses for humans make fears over its use into a major nothingburger. A human would need to spend a year chugging down five gallons of Diet Coke each day for the elevated cancer risk to be statistically meaningful.
2. When I catch someone trying to be convincing in an area where I lack domain expertise, I judge them by their overall demeanor and (if I can catch on) general rhetorical logic [in that order] long before I consider the truth of their specific claims. The IRL people I've met who are most stridently into wholesome natural living have fervency and lack of appreciation that it's the dose that makes the poison to the degree that it makes RFK discussing vaccine policy sound grounded in reality by comparison. Perhaps if they were born in a different society, they'd make excellent temple priests who ensure no lazy shortcuts or "it's all we have available" excuses are made when it's time to ensure a full harvest. Instead, they're the kinds who play 50 million questions and have genuine concerns that the radio waves that connect my wireless headphones are giving me brain damage or control. [To be fair, there is some large selection effects here. My hobbies have a habit of attracting those who are so open-minded that their brains fell out. Since online interactions strip the majority of demeanor and previous interactions, I judge online strangers with strange opinions way less harshly than IRL contacts unless they've gone out of their way to be obnoxious. IRL, I'm exposed to a lot more generic chemicals bad rhetoric than in my usual online bubbles. ]
3. Based on 1, unless I have preexisting trust with a particular journalist, layman's science journalism—when it's performed by journalists dabbling in science rather than scientists trying their hands at public communication—is far too likely to overblow a headline or misrepresent the research conclusions. "Here are 30 links to news articles" doesn't appeal to me because 25 of them are probably copying each other (that's just how internet journalism works). It's highly unlikely that all 5 of the remaining links misread the original paper, but I'm not reading through all those (perhaps AI summarization could help here—at the very least it could identify commonalities and outliers for manual examination later).
4. Related to 2, two additional SMBC comics that share my attitude: Vitamin Water v. Butter and Pronounceable Ingredients Only

That said, sometimes the health nuts are correct. As it turns out, all the coughing smokers do is a strong sign that smoking is bad for your lungs.

What are some heuristics to sort health tips that get passed around without citation into one of the following buckets?

1. You'll notice the improvement within a week once you've finished withdrawal. Smoking, boozing, eating meat or alliums at dinnertime, and heroin are in this bucket.
2. The effect is real and significant, but you may not notice the impact until at least a year has gone by, if ever. Seatbelts and bike/horse helmets are the two examples that immediately pop to mind.
3. Technically non-zero, but ultimately trivial. The opening aspartame example would fit. In a similar line to doctors who recommend against treating prostate cancer because the treatments would shorten your lifespan by more than letting that cancer run its course and waiting for a heart attack or totally unrelated cancer to do you in, these interventions are meaningless to anyone who uses motor vehicles regularly.
4. Playground rumors or outright disinformation. Vaccines causing autism and yellow 5 as an HRT supplement b/c it shrinks your testicles belong in this wastebin.

Circling back to the impact of PFAS in Gore-Tex that inspired today's thinking, my layman's estimate that the effects on the factory workers who make a career out of working with the stuff is a low 2 when following proper safety procedures. Without them, a definite 1. For wearers of the stuff, a solid 3.

One final reason I may have been so fired up on this topic is that I listened to a highlight reel from a Congressional hearing round table on food & pharmaceutical safety last week. During the testimony, I had a nagging feeling that at least half of what they said was true, but the truth percent is below 75, and I had no idea which was which because all claims were presented with the same urgency.

I posted my own thoughts here, TLDR: I am afraid and catastrophizing and thinking very black and white and spiraling quite a bit and I'm not even American.

This is not meant to be another ~news thread.

Please keep discussion in this thread to mental health only.

How are you doing?

What will the impact of this be on your life?