Friday, January 18, 2008

Snopes wrong again

The insufferably pompous and arbitrary "debunker" site Snopes.com has an alarming tendency to pooh-pooh anything and everything that doesn't fit within popular consciousness. Take for example, its page that supposedly refutes the dangers of microwaved plastic.

Like most snopes-isms, the basis for the attack is not so much on the subject's own merits, but specifically regards a series of emails passed around the internet.

Read the Snopes article, and then read reputable sources on the subjects of plastic outgassing.

The Snopes article ridicules people who have "an unshakeable belief that using plastic containers in microwave ovens causes cancer".

But it's already an established FACT that plastics outgas and impart hormone-like chemicals to that which they touch.

The resulting hormonal imbalance is - and this is an established FACT - a major cancer risk.

Finally, it's an established FACT that heating plastic (whether by microwave or by conventional oven) tends to increase its propensity to outgas and release chemicals. The Snopes article even acknowledges this itself!

So how is it that Snopes takes the obvious and well-known facts about plastics, and twists them around to say that black is white, night is day, up is down? What's their real agenda here? Or do they just get off on faux-debunking everything in sight just for the fun of it?

1 comment:

Heather said...

Good article. My husband took a plastics class and we learned about how the fumes remain in the milk bottles which are inflated and then filled with milk before they can dissipate! Yuck!

[This has more to do with the CPSIA, but I thought you'd enjoy this "Snopes is Wrong" Seuss-style spoof story.]

"People BELIEVE what we say, yes they do!
Whatever we say they'll believe that it's true!

They won't check their own facts; they'll rely upon us --
We'll lull them to sleep and they won't make a fuss!..."

http://www.easyfunschool.com/snopes_is_wrong_about_the_cpsia_spoof_seuss_story.html