Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (66 page)

A
TREE GROWS IN GRANNY
An elderly North Carolina woman arrived at the ER saying she had green vines growing in her “virginny,” as she quaintly called it. An exam and a few X-rays confirmed her story: It was a vine, and it had sprouted…out of a potato. The woman explained that her uterus had
prolapsed
, or fallen out (a condition not uncommon in elderly women), so she’d popped in a potato to hold it up—and forgotten about it.

BAD KITTY!

A woman brought her unconscious boyfriend into the ER in a panic and explained that she’d found him lying in the bathtub. Doctors noted a large lump on the man’s head…and some curious scratches on his scrotum. As they were trying to determine what happened, the man woke up and told his story: He’d been cleaning his tub in the nude, and while kneeling to scrub the drain, he didn’t realize that his swaying testicles had drawn the attention of his cat. The cat pounced, and the man jumped in pain…then hit his head on the tiles and knocked himself out.

WIENER DOG

In a fit of depression and self-loathing, a middle-aged man did the unthinkable—he cut off his own penis. The urologist at the ER believed he could reattach it if it was found, but time was running out. So a police officer rushed to the man’s house to look for it. There, he heard a choking sound coming from the man’s poodle. After a brief struggle, the officer was able to wrench the man’s missing member from the dog’s mouth. Sadly, it was too damaged to reattach, but the cop was given a citation for service “above and beyond the call of duty.”

In 2008 a man who claimed the drug Mirapex caused his gambling habit won an $8 million lawsuit
.

MMMM…CHEMICALS

Boy, this food tastes good! Uh-oh. Taste isn’t everything. Turns out food manufacturers use more than 3,000 chemicals to make their products look better and last longer. Here are a few
.

A
CESULFAME-POTASSIUM
Found in:
Baked goods, chewing gum, pudding, gelatin, diet soda, chewable medications
The Dangers:
It’s also called acesulfame-K, or ace-K (K is the chemical symbol for potassium). Never heard of it? It’s an artificial sweetener roughly 200 times sweeter than sugar. The U.S Food and Drug Administration allowed this chemical to be added to diet soft drinks in 1988. Animal testing by the German company Hoechst suggests that the additive may cause cancer. Large doses of
acetoacetamide
, a byproduct of the sweetener, were also shown to affect the thyroid in rats, rabbits, and dogs. According to the nonprofit Institute of Food Technology, adequate human trials have not yet been conducted.

FD&C RED #40

Found in:
Sodas, candy, toaster pastries, cheese-flavored chips, and children’s vitamins

The Dangers:
The most widely used food dye, Red #40, was originally manufactured from coal tar; now it’s mostly made from petroleum. A 2007 study found that it causes increased levels of hyperactivity, aggressive behavior, attention deficit disorder, and lower IQs in children. The British Food Standards Agency has also linked it to migraines in adults. Red #40 is banned in Denmark, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Sweden but is widely used in the United States.

2-PHENYLPHENOL

Found in:
Citrus fruits

The Dangers:
2-phenylphenol is a preservative marketed under the trade names Dowicide, Torsite, Preventol, Nipacide, and many others. Its primary use is as an agricultural fungicide, applied to most commercially available oranges, limes, lemons, and grapefruits, after the fruit has been picked. Eye contact can cause severe irritation and burns, with possible eye damage. A 2002 study in Holland has linked 2-phenylphenol to hyperactivity in kids.

In 2003 biologist K.W. Moeliker published a study on the existence of homosexual necrophiliac ducks
.

SODIUM BENZOATE

Found in:
Fruit juice, carbonated drinks, pickles
The Dangers:
Manufacturers have used sodium benzoate (and benzoic acid) for a century to prevent the growth of microorganisms in acidic foods. They seem to be safe, though they can cause allergic reactions in some people. The problem: When sodium benzoate is mixed with ascorbic acid (vitamin C), the combination can form benzene, a chemical known to cause leukemia and other cancers. In the 1990s, the FDA asked companies not to use benzoate in products that contained ascorbic acid. Even so, many still do.

SODIUM NITRITE

Found in:
Bacon, hot dogs, lunchmeat, smoked fish, corned beef
The Dangers:
Meat processors use sodium nitrite because it gives cured meat an appetizing red color (without it, hot dogs would be gray). Adding nitrites to food can lead to the formation of small amounts of potent cancer-causing chemicals (
nitrosamines
), especially in fried bacon. Several studies have linked nitrites with various types of cancer. “This would be at the top of my list of additives to cut from my diet,” says Christine Gerbstadt, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

DIACETYL

Found in:
“Butter”-flavored microwave popcorn and margarine
The Dangers:
Small amounts exist in real butter, but the levels are much higher in processed butter-flavored foods. Although low levels are considered safe, workers in popcorn factories learned the hard way that prolonged exposure to diacetyl causes obstructive lung disease, which can be fatal. Following a lawsuit by the workers and widespread publicity about “Popcorn Worker’s Lung” in 2007, most American food manufacturers switched to safer ingredients.

Poll: iPhone users are twice as likely as BlackBerry users to watch “adult” content on their devices
.

HYDROLYZED VEGETABLE PROTEIN (HVP)

Found in:
Soups, hot dogs, lunchmeat, sauce mixes
The Dangers:
Also known as “natural flavor,” “soy protein,” or “textured vegetable protein,” HVP is vegetable (usually soybean) protein that’s been boiled in hydrochloric acid and chemically broken down into amino acids. Used to enhance the flavor of food, it contains MSG, which has been shown to cause adverse reactions in some people. According to FDA rules, foods made with HVP do not have to be labeled as containing MSG.

POTASSIUM BROMATE

Found in:
White flour, bread, rolls, and other baked goods
The Dangers:
This additive is used to increase the volume of bread. Most bromate breaks down to form harmless bromide. However, bromate itself is proven to cause cancer in animals. It has been banned virtually worldwide, except in Japan and the United States. In 1999 the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban bromate—but the petition failed. Only one state in the U.S. requires a cancer warning on the label of products containing bromate: California.

A LOSS OF APPETITE

So what
can
you eat that’s 100% safe? Fruits and vegetables? Maybe, but most of them are sprayed with pesticides. Frozen vegetables? A lot of them are disinfected with formaldehyde. How about a yummy bowl of ice cream? Okay, but remember what makes it so creamy: a chemical called
arboxymethylcellulose
, which in one study produced tumors in 80% of the rats it was tested on. Bon apétit.

A BREATH OF STALE AIR

In the Netherlands, after a nationwide ban on tobacco smoking in bars and restaurants took effect, many patrons missed the nostalgic atmosphere that can only come from a smoke-filled lounge. To capitalize, a Dutch special effects company, Rain Showtechniek, sells (for about $900 U.S) a cigarette smoke machine that provides that “haze of yesteryear” without any unhealthy side effects.

Bats can be taught to do tricks
.

HOLY CR*P!

News from the wild world of…religion
.

•
In May 2006
, Clara Jean Brown, 62, of Daphne, Alabama, was standing in her kitchen praying for her family’s safety during an intense thunderstorm. Just as she finished the prayer and said “Amen”…the kitchen blew up. A bolt of lightning had hit the ground across the street, traveled the length of an underground water pipe, and blasted a hole through the floor of her kitchen, sending concrete flying around the room and knocking her over. The house was severely damaged; Ms. Brown was okay. (Amen!)

•
Early-morning service
in a Catholic church in Rennertshofen, Germany, was disrupted on New Year’s Day, 2001, by strange noises. Someone went to investigate—and found a man and woman having sex upstairs in the church’s gallery. The couple fled, but a church employee recognized the man: He was a local police officer. The 26-year-old cop was suspended and faces three years in prison for “disruption of religious practice.”

•
In front of
the Metro South Church in Trenton, Michigan, a series of strange signs began appearing in 2009—signs that said “Metro South Church sucks” and “Metro South makes me sick.” Who made the signs? Satan. Not really—they were
signed
“Satan,” but they were actually put up by the church. It was all part of an “edgy” ad campaign meant to attract younger people. “Jesus,” Youth Pastor Adam Dorband said, “wants us to be creative.”

•
Reverend Canon
David Parrott of London’s St. Lawrence Jewry Church (a 17th-century Anglican church built near what was once a Jewish ghetto), asked his parishioners to bring their electronic communication gadgets—laptops, BlackBerrys, and so on—to church one Sunday in January 2010. Parrott had people pile them up on the altar—and then he blessed them. “By Your blessing,” he intoned, “may these phones and computers, symbols of all the technology and communication in our daily lives, be a reminder to us that You are a God who communicates with us and who speaks by Your word.” People were also asked to hold up their cell phones during the blessing (although they had to be turned off first).

A new scientific field
,
neurotheology
,
studies what happens to the brain during a religious experience
.

•
Officials from
the Russian Orthodox Church called police in November 2008 with an unusual complaint: One of their churches had been stolen. A 200-year-old church northeast of Moscow had been abandoned for a few months before a planned reopening. But while the church was closed, local villagers had dismantled it brick by brick and sold the pieces to a local businessman for one ruble each (about four cents U.S.). “Of course, this is blasphemy,’ a church official said. “These people have to realize they committed a grave sin.”