I think it's conflating domestic squalor with environmental decay. The phrase "safe as milk" was a sarcastic shorthand reference to strontium 90 affecting mothers' milk and causing deformities in babies. At the end the narrator is separating himself from the grand-scale pollutants - I may look like a living wreck but I "know better".
This is a Herb Bermann lyric wrongly credited to Don.
I think it's conflating domestic squalor with environmental decay. The phrase "safe as milk" was a sarcastic shorthand reference to strontium 90 affecting mothers' milk and causing deformities in babies. At the end the narrator is separating himself from the grand-scale pollutants - I may look like a living wreck but I "know better". This is a Herb Bermann lyric wrongly credited to Don.