Illegal outerwear
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 5
CONSUMER AFFAIRS DEP'T.
Is Your Parka Poisonous?
IT'S DISCOUNT-OUTERWEAR season (also discount-premium-artificial-Christmas-tree season, if you're shopping) and I had a tab open with the L.L. Bean '82 Baxter State Parka on it. It looks like the Baxter State Parka I had in the '80s, a little boxy and lightweight by contemporary winterwear standards, but the people at Bean have gone deeper than that and even revived the vertical-zippered game pocket on the back of the coat, like the one my dad had in the 1970s. I remember sitting in the vinyl-leather living-room recliner when I was small and exploring the manifold flaps and pockets of that parka, when it was new. It was like a wearable, slightly scratchy Swiss Army knife, and its most marvelous feature—the equivalent of Dad's Swiss Army knife's scissors—was that vast, flat compartment quasi-hidden on the rear.
Not that I personally need a parka at the moment, but it was a possible option for the teens, who are in the adult-size market. Or it seemed like an option till I went to show one of them the tab today and I saw a note on the page reading "Available in all U.S. states except for NEW YORK and CALIFORNIA."
The last time I saw a warning like that, I was looking at garden machetes. New York is very strict about blade lengths, and the knife-rights people don't seem to have gotten around yet to testing them under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. But what was going on here?
An L.L. Bean customer service representative explained, via chat, why the parka was unavailable: as of January 1, New York has joined with California in banning textile products that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS are the currently notorious "forever chemicals" that linger indefinitely, accumulate in the environment and living tissues, and are apparently bad for the health of everything. They're horrifyingly accumulating in the food supply, thanks to reckless use of sewage sludge as fertilizer, and just this week scientists reported that they're being concentrated in the drinking water, thanks to the water-treatment plants that produce the tainted sewage sludge also failing to remove them from the treated water. They're also, it seems, effective at making coats stainproof and waterproof. And at keeping food from sticking to pans, but that part we were warned about. We already got rid of our old nonstick pans. Now winter coats are a problem, which means winter coats were already a problem, only now we find out about it.
The outerwear companies have been adjusting their waterproofing technology to the bans, albeit not usually in a way that's readily clear from the product pages. "New! No longer toxic!" apparently isn't the most attractive marketing message. Googling [brand name] and PFAS may or may not bring up a page where a company discusses the issue. The North Face's Chemical Responsibility page, for instance, says "we are committed to using non-fluorinated solutions across all of our products as soon as we can without compromising the performance of our gear," which left me putting a new copy of my current parka into a shopping cart to double-check whether they would deliver it to New York.
L.L. Bean, for its part, says "we have successfully transitioned to PFAS-free durable water repellent (DWR) alternatives." The old-style Baxter State Parkas seem to be covered by the part of the message that says, "Where permissible, we will sell the limited amount of PFAS positive items we have remaining in our inventory which is environmentally preferable to disposal." That's Eighties retro for you.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, January 7, 2025
★★★ The wind held an oak leaf aloft and almost still for a moment, then let it drop. No walk was short enough to get away with going hatless. Over on the East Side, the gusts pulled a long steam plume from a street chimney and wrung tears from the eyes, then quickly set about evaporating the tear tracks. A cloud glided past the top of a sun-struck ultratall. Reflected light climbed the uptown spire of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Walking into the blinding sun on Fifth Avenue felt better than descending to the subway, as the body chose the brightness over the logical way to get out of the cold faster.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Institution Recipes For Use In Schools, Colleges, Hospitals And Other Institutions, by Emma Smedley, Director of Public School Luncheons, Philadelphia, Pa.; Formerly Instructor in Domestic Science, Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, Pa.; Instructor in Dietetics, The Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses, Baltimore, Md, published in 1919 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Egg Sandwiches I
(50 Sandwiches)
2 dozen hard-cooked eggs
2 ounces butter
2 ounces flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
6 ounces butter
1 pint hot milk
100 slices bread
Put the eggs through food chopper. Make White Sauce of butter, flour, seasoning, and milk. Mix with the chopped eggs and add more seasoning, if necessary. Spread between slices of buttered bread.
Calories in recipe 1,651 protein, 11,611 total
Calories in one sandwich: 33 protein, 232 total
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
