We were smart enough to add lead to fuel, so I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if something we mindlessly use today is actually super unhealthy too. People often seem to suffer "End of History" syndrome when judging these things. "Yeah we were stupid back then but today's scientists are smart."
If people try to avoid processed food, products containing a lot of suspicious "chemicals", use the washer's program that does an extra rinse-run and whatnot I don't think that's entirely unjustified.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif...
https://www.cdc.gov/DIABETES/statistics/slides/long_term_tre...
Do we?
> Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
The major medical advances have been sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccination, which have saved the lives of millions of children. We are otherwise much unhealthier than most people in the past, unless they were unlucky enough to grow up in times of famine, which was not common - though, in all fairness to the modern world, famine has been essentially eradicated altogether in advanced countries.
Plus nations with obese epidemics like US is seeing overall health of the population and life expectancy decreasing