While looking for a hose end mender at the hardware store the other day, I ran across a fellow mom who was purchasing the same thing. She was practically paralyzed by choosing between a brass end that she said contained lead which causes cancer, or a plastic end which she also feared would cause cancer. I couldn't help but get a little annoyed, seeing as how her child probably wasn't consuming that much water from the hose on a daily basis, and in this country, decisions about what we expose our children to are comparitively trivial when you see pictures like this from around the world.