CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
A local renter, who was not born between 1955-1980, and therefore must spend the entire duration of his 20s living in a poorly maintained rental property that would be condemned in any other developed country except this one, is today weighing up what it’s gonna be that gets him.
As an Australian adult that was born after the twin towers came down, Nicky Hammersmith had initially assumed the government would have banned most of the things that could affect his health through simple exposure.
But given the fact that cigarettes aren’t even banned, and that black-market cigarettes are now cheaper than legal cigarettes were ten years ago, he’s starting to think maybe the government isn’t on top of this type of stuff.
As a non-smoker who’s never really been able to afford to do recreational drugs, Nicky instead wonders which of the incidental toxic chemicals will be the ones that get him in the end.
Will it be the lead-based paint that is starting to emerge under the single coat of Dulux that was used to cover it up after the outright ban in the early 1990s?
Or will it be the asbestos that definitely exists above the manhole that he often has to climb into when retrieving his camping equipment that cannot be stored anywhere else because this property provides no parking?
Or will it be the toxic chemicals that exist in just about every no frills, plastic-wrapped grocery item he is forced to live off because Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis caused by a property bubble that serves nobody except post-war baby boomers who think they are geniuses for buying land when it was cheap and having every government since then work tirelessly to protect said investment?
Given the fact that his landlords fit the aforementioned tight arse boomer archetype perfectly, he imagines that he’s probably staring down the barrel of all three.
“Lucky I can surf,” he says.
“After reading about all the chemicals in plastic like BPA, Phthalates, PCBs, PBDEs & PFAS… Man I think it’s time to walk out on this lease, take my timber Malibu to Lismore and live off the land”
“I need some salt water to flush that shit out. But my skin burns pretty easy so I’ll have to pack some sunscreen”
“Ah fuck me dead, even that comes in plastic…”
“Jesus, we gotta do something about this.”
