Avoid Toxic Bandages
Some leading brands are surprisingly toxic. Mamavation scores again with PFAS testing. No, you are not "so old" that it doesn't matter. Just toss the bad stuff.
My grandmother’s generation used boiled cotton fabric for bandaging wounds. This turns out to have been the best solution to covering a wound. Cotton was not sprayed back in the day.
The idea of PFAS on an open wound is horrifying.
Below are “zero detect” bandages from Mamavation’s testing,
3M Micropore Surgical/Medical Tape — non-detect organic fluorine
All Terrain Neon Kids Bandages — non-detect organic fluorine in the absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandage.
Band-Aid Hello Kitty Assorted Adhesive Bandages — non-detect organic fluorine in the absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandage.
CVS Sterile Manuka Honey Sports Bandages — non-detect organic fluorine in the absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandage.
FEBU Organic Bamboo Strip Bandages — non-detect organic fluorine on both absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandages.
Patch Bamboo Bandages for Kids with Coconut Oil — non-detect organic fluorine on both absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandages. (Use discount code “mamavation” for 10% off products!)
Welly Good Vibes Bravery Badges — non-detect organic fluorine on both absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandages.
Welly Waterproof Bravery Assorted Waterproof Bandages — non-detect organic fluorine on both absorbent pad and sticky flaps of bandages.
I left Mamavation’s original purchase links intact as thanks for all their research. If you’d like to help support their work, here is the Mamavation membership page.
You can read all the bandage study details here.
My bandage solution: I have woven undyed silk that I cut into strips when bandages are needed. In general, synthetic materials create and harbor pathogenic biofilms, so I selected the silk. Woven silk is stretchy, so it makes a good bandage. If a cut is small, I just scrape aloe from my aloe plant onto it. I started doing this about 15 years ago, after a number of friends contracted MRSA following hospital treatment for wounds.
Manuka honey is a well-established wound treatment that I recommend having on hand. You can cover it with any natural fabric.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) might increase the risk of childhood diseases by disrupting hormone-mediated processes that are critical for growth and development during gestation, infancy and childhood. The fetus, infant and child might have enhanced sensitivity to environmental stressors such as EDCs due to their rapid development and increased exposure to some EDCs as a consequence of development-specific behaviour, anatomy and physiology. In this Review, I discuss epidemiological studies examining the relationship between early-life exposure to bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, triclosan and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) with childhood neurobehavioural disorders and obesity. The available epidemiological evidence suggest that prenatal exposure to several of these ubiquitous EDCs is associated with adverse neurobehaviour (BPA and phthalates) and excess adiposity or increased risk of obesity and/or overweight (PFAS). Quantifying the effects of EDC mixtures, improving EDC exposure assessment, reducing bias from confounding, identifying periods of heightened vulnerability and elucidating the presence and nature of sexually dimorphic EDC effects would enable stronger inferences to be made from epidemiological studies than currently possible. Ultimately, improved estimates of the causal effects of EDC exposures on child health could help identify susceptible subpopulations and lead to public health interventions to reduce these exposures.
This is a decent study, despite some of the weasel words regarding harm. You can read the entire study for free “Early Life Exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Childhood Obesity and Neurodevelopment.”