Long Burn

Day of fluorine

I had a big meeting today to sign a commercial R & D contract and so I put on the new wrinkle-free, stain-free shirt I bought at the outlet mall in Medford. It smelled funny, like pesticides, and made my skin crawl and muscles ache, and so I put on a T-shirt underneath and that made the day tolerable. My wife said it was a good looking shirt.

Then I went to an 8 AM appointment at the dental hygeinist and she ran that devilishly sharp buzzing device around my gumline and painted my teeth with fluorine.

Then I went to work and on the train I discovered I had left my pass at home, so I got off the train in Malmø and bought a ticket. Earlier I would have chanced it but today I felt like being an honorable citizen. Got to work, and the big meeting was rescheduled so we can work out some details. I had ordered food for the meeting and instead of feeding lawyers I was able to give some students a free lunch-- one of my students just got a job at the new Danish Ministry for Climate and Energy, his dream, so he was psyched. He will be helping organise the next international 'Kyoto' climate summit, to be held in Copenhagen in 2009.

Back home again I got to take off that funky shirt. I read the label and found out it had been treated with teflon, a fluoropolymer. It was the day of fluorine. I'm going to wash the shirt and see if that helps-- has anyone else had this kind of negative reaction to a wrinkle-free shirt??

posted by Matt_J @ 8:43 PM