Welcome to CenturyLife.Org (the name comes from the semi-serious goal of achieving 100 years of life). Franz is the founder and works in economics and his undergrad included engineering physics, math, and statistics. He also took a science journalism course with the former science editor of The New York Times. We enjoy cooking, traveling, and photography.
We started this site because we had a hard time finding good information about product safety, and figured that others might benefit from our subject matter expertise. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about carcinogens and food safety in particular, oftentimes from scaremongers who don’t have any science background.
The government is doing an inadequate job of educating and protecting people regarding nutrition, health, and consumer safety (for food as well as products). For instance, there are over 60,000 unregulated chemicals in use in the USA. Our decaying water infrastructure has led to contaminated tap water all across the country. The agricultural lobby continues to push the USDA nutritional guidelines to promote more grain consumption, even though we don’t necessarily need to eat that much grain–especially when a lot of it is highly-subsidized (via corn) and processed (without fiber, grains aren’t nearly as good for you). And the FDA seems unable to adequately police food quality.
Therefore it’s up to consumers to educate themselves and to fix things for themselves. We’ll be posting news and information to help fill the gaps left behind by Uncle Sam, like how you can get rid of plastic in your home and how you can purify your tap water affordably. But many “science news” articles are actually junk science. So we post only studies by legitimate sources.
If you wish to contact us, please use social media.
Lastly, we’re independent. We don’t have sponsors or get free/discounted stuff, so we don’t get pressure to say nice things about bad products. We buy and use stuff ourselves. To pay for website maintenance, we link to sites which pay us a small referral fee, at no cost to you.
Sur La Table (click anywhere outside the popup window to close it)
Thanks!
–Franz
If you’d like to subscribe for monthly updates (we don’t believe in spam so it’s once per month), you can do one of the following: 1) follow this site via the social media links on the sidebar to the left; or 2) subscribe to our email list (see below).
As for the following privacy disclaimers, the short version is that I will never spam you. The newsletter only comes out once a month. That’s only 12 times per year, which isn’t a lot.
Privacy Policy
We recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit CenturyLife.Org, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.
Log Files
As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.
Cookies and Web Beacons
We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums. No personal information is recorded or kept. Mostly we just want to know how many visitors we’re getting. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser.
We also use third party advertisements on CenturyLife.Org to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).
DoubleClick DART cookies
We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”).
The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers.
You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx
You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.
Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.
Disclaimers & Disclosures
The contents of this site, such as text, graphics, images, forum postings, or other material (“Content”) are for information purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical, legal, financial, or other advice. Always seek the advice of your physician, lawyer, financial planner, CPA, or other professional with any questions you may have regarding any Content. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Never delay or disregard problems on the basis of any Content. Reliance on any Content is solely at your own risk. The Content may contain materials that offend you in some way. If you find any Content offensive, report the problem to the website administration and avoid visiting the offensive Content. This site and it Content are provided on an “as is” basis. Reliance on any information provided by this site, including information by visitors and forum posts, are solely at your own risk. This site, its owners, employees, suppliers, and affiliates shall not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from or in connection with the use of this site, including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, incidental, punitive and consequential damages (including, without limitation, loss of profits, goodwill, data or use), even if such parties have been advised of the possibility of such damages. The foregoing limitation should apply regardless of the form of action and whether in contract, breach of warranty, tort, negligence, strict liability or otherwise. Use common sense at all times.
Per FTC 16 CFR part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, I am making a general assertion that all the views and opinions on all products reviewed at this site are 100% my own or those of the visitor writing the review. To date, I have not received free products for evaluation, and I have not receive monetary compensation from manufacturers for reviewing their products. If there is ever such a case where I receive free products or monetary compensation from manufacturers for reviewing their products, I will disclose the conflict of interest on the product review page. I do my best to be a fair and neutral editor.
Disclaimer: Some external links at this website are to retailers which give me a small referral fee at no cost to you. This helps offset website server costs. Please help support this site by using those links. I don’t receive free samples. Everything I review, I paid for and used by myself.
It’s expensive to run a website using reliable, reputable name/hosting services, so I may allow advertising by third parties. I have no control and assume no responsibility over the content of such advertising. Please avoid visiting any advertising that you find offensive or negative in any way. Also, I may post affiliate links for which I receive a small referral fee at no cost to you. CenturyLife.Org is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. I appreciate any support readers want to send to keep this site alive. You can also help by telling interested friends/family about this site!