Senators and lobbyists to America's voters and their kids: "Drop dead!"

Has your home turned into

a killing jar for humans? 

This cranky post will tell you 

whom to thank.

I was eight years old when I learned about trapping and killing butterflies and other insects. It involved a killing jar — essentially a glass jar containing some wadded up cotton soaked in an awful-smelling chemical. The summer camp nature counselor who taught me about this stuff also taught me the name of the chemical. Formaldehyde.

Killing bugs with formaldehyde is no longer the most popular method. The professionals would rather use ethyl acetate, chloroform, or cyanide. Those are considered less harmful to you than formaldehyde. But there is one place where formaldehyde is still wildly  prevalent.  Your home.

Turns out that the glue that holds layers of laminated furniture together – not to mention laminated flooring and even certain items of clothing – is generously laced with formaldehyde, and those items gradually give off formaldehyde fumes. 

No, you’re not likely to keel over dead, like a bug in a jar, after a few seconds . But exposure to formaldehyde over time, even in small amounts, is associated with leukemia, especially myeloid leukemia, nasal cancer, and for good measure, asthma, according to the National Cancer Institute.

So the Environmental Protection Agency has been tying for the past five years to limit how much you can be slowly gassed to death by formaldehyde-laced products. Unfortunately, a small — shall we call it an impediment? — has cropped up: corruptible law makers under the sway of lobbyists with fists full of money.

Start with a guy who has already been labeled “Senator Formaldehyde,” — Republican Senator David Vitter from Louisiana. Although Republicans will tell you they’re not scientists and don’t know diddley squat about climate change, some of them suddenly turn to experts when it comes to formaldehyde. 

Vitter is a case in point. By his actions and things he said, he is implicitly in favor of poisoning of Americans with this subsance. Not a huge surprise considering that since 2009 he has graciously accepted approximately $900,340 in campaign contributions from the chemical industry and other industries that use various poisonous chemicals in the products you, I, and your children use and inhale the gasses from. Hey, the Supreme Court says it ain't bribery. It's merely freedom of speech.

Sad for this cranky old Democrat to say, it’s not just Republicans  like Vitter and Roger Wicker of Mississippi who are guilty of allowing industry to poison us and our kids to make a grubby buck. Senator Barbara Boxer and even the current White House are effectively co-conspirators, the way I read information recently published in a New York Times article.

One of he poisoned furniture and floor lobby’s arcane arguments is the cost of the illness and death their products spew into America. Under the pressure of the poisoners, reports the New York Times…

“the estimated benefit of the proposed rule dropped to $48 million a year, from as much as $278 million a year. The much-reduced amount deeply weakened the agency’s justification for the sometimes costly new testing that would be required under the new rules, a federal official involved in the effort said.’’

In other words, if the lobbyists manage to whittle down the value of your life and health, after a while you and your kids just aren’t worth saving. You're  just another bug in a killing jar. After all, a senator who graciously accepted close to a million bucks from America's Lucrezia Borgias doesn't need to worry about you. Or your stinking vote. You'll be dead anyway.