Banned!

Over the years we have seen a lot of things disappear from store shelves. I remember using carbon tetrachloride and benzine as cleaning solvents. You could buy them anywhere.

But these were found to be so toxic that they were eventually banned. Of course we did not realize they were toxic when we were ignorantly scrubbing stuff with them. And no one in their right mind would dispute the banning of such dangerous chemicals, at least for casual use.

A lot of popular products have been reformulated to comply with various new regulations intended to limit environmental pollution or to remove toxic components. Sometimes the reformulated product is as good as the original. Sometimes not.

We cannot totally resent being protected from extremely toxic substances. But sometimes the logic behind which products are to be banned and which are to be allowed escapes me. Products containing ethylene glycol, for example, have been banned or reformulated to remove that substance. But there are a ton of other products containing ethylene glycol still being sold without restriction. You can buy the stuff in the grocery store in the form of automotive coolant. I just wonder about the consistency (or lack of) in some of these situations.

D.D.