Tuesday, January 24, 2017

A Recall On Something That Could Have Saved Me—Or Did It Already?

Posted By on Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 5:00 PM


As the spring semester started to roll in, I figured a good way to stay sane through the 14 weeks of stress and pulling my hair out would be to purchase a Himalayan salt lamp.

I’ve heard from my peers that salt lamps have many natural benefits to staying calm, cool, and somewhat collected.

According to Natural Living Ideas' "10 Reasons To Have A Himalayan Salt Lamp In Every Room Of Your Home," the environmentally friendly lamps cleanse and deodorize the air, reduce allergy and asthma symptoms, ease coughing, increase energy, neutralize electromagnetic radiation, give you a better sleep, improve your mood, and treat seasonal affective disorder. What more could a student ask for?

Ever since I was in high school, I’ve felt anxious for no reason at all. When I entered college, the anxiety got worse with the build up on my daily responsibilities and stress, which in turn lead to sleepless night, never being able to clear my mind, and feeling I couldn’t breathe.

I know I’m not the only one whose had this never-ending feeling, so I did some research on ways to help me keep my head above the water. I’ve resorted to yoga, aromatherapy, and currently have an obsession with candles. I know it sounds a bit odd, but I personally feel like these changes in my life have helped my anxiety, lifted my mood and has lead to better performance in my everyday studies.

Just as I was scrolling through my daily Tasty cooking videos on Facebook, I came across a video advertising these lamps. It told me everything I wanted to hear.

I looked into some lamps on the cheaper side of the cost spectrum, only to find out that there was a recall on the product reported this month.

According to USAToday, Michael’s recalled 80,000 lamps because customers complained the dimmer switch and outlet plug overheated.

80,000? That is a lot of lamps that clearly didn’t work for customers and enough to let me know the purchase isn’t worth it. Also, environmentally friendly? Sure, the base of the lamps are made of wood, but I think causing fires in people’s homes cancels that out. I’ll be sure to check that off my list of products not to buy.

Now that I’m thinking about the lamps as a whole, how would I really know if this lamp is working and how would I know if it’s just a placebo effect? If I think it’s working, then it’s working, but if I’m still extremely stressed and have reckless sleeping nights, my poor bank account will haunt me forever.

So, thank you U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for keeping me safe and saving me from wasting about $50.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,