This Article on Halloween Safety is the Journalism We All Deserve
(CNN) Halloween is usually full of fun and adventure -- and candy -- making it a favorite holiday for many. Before you hit the sidewalks on Halloween, make sure that your family gets the most out of the day by playing it safe.
Couldn’t be more spot-on here. Let’s take a journey through professional journalism to see how we should stay safe this Halloween.
Face paint might seem simple enough, but the national Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released studies in 2009 and 2016 that found toxic chemicals in them.
"We found lead in nearly 20% of the Halloween face paints tested. Cadmium in nearly 30%," said last year's report, citing research on dozens of products. "Lead is strongly associated with learning disabilities and developmental problems. Cadmium is linked to breast, kidney, lung and prostate cancer." The coalition recommends picking costumes that do not require face paint.
Interesting! Don’t put stuff on your face that will give you cancer! Or learning problems!
Colored contact lenses are another Halloween staple, enhancing the scary look. Dr. Thomas Steinemann, clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, recommends buying only lenses that are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration and sold by an FDA-approved vendor.
Many lenses sold online and in stores are not FDA-approved, he said. "Such lenses may be contaminated and can cause terrible infection." Colored lenses should not be worn continuously, as they interfere with oxygen transmission to the cornea.
If you put something that doesn’t belong in your eye, you should be ready for your eye to fall out. That’s not a hard one.
Maybe you're considering a wide-eyed, doll-like look. But the FDA has not approved "anime or circle lenses" and warns against buying them.
I would even go so far as to say that if you're considering "a wide-eyed, doll-like look", then you deserve to go blind.
That bag full of candy can be tempting, but eating too much at once could also make children sick. Mickey Silverstein, a public school teacher in Wilmette, Illinois, recalled one Halloween when her 6-year-old son, who's now an adult, ate all his treats in one sitting. "He threw up a mountain of chocolate," she said. "That never happened again."
"For the next day, specially in the pediatric population, there is a potential for candy-induced diarrhea from ingesting an unusually large amount of sorbitol-containing candy," Dr. David Toro, an assistant clinical professor of clinical emergency medicine at Indiana University, wrote in an email.
This one’s pretty important, because some of us most people struggle to learn this into their twenties. If you eat too much candy, you’ll almost definitely shit yourself. Maybe not at 18, but trust me, young gun, soon enough that iron stomach will fade and you’ll be mortal like the rest of us. Also how about this mom talking about how her son threw up once from eating too much chocolate and then never did it again- um duh. Teaching yourself how not to throw up from eating food is very much trial and error. I basically have to throw up once from overeating each food item because it’s a little different for each one- for example how am I supposed to equate number of wings to slices of pizza? Hm? That’s right, there’s only one way: trial and error. So take all of this advice except for this last bit, kids: eat your candy and throw up, it’s how you become an adult.
P.S. There’s nothing more embarrassing than throwing up from strictly overeating. There are so many sensors in your body designed to tell you to stop eating, and getting to the point where you throw up means you’ve ignored all of them. Figure that out, Darwin.
