Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Almost Darwin awards

The helpful folks at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation put out a press release last week urging people to not to poison themselves or blow things up. They didn't put too fine a point on it:

Flowers are blooming, bugs are buzzing, and people are making dumb mistakes with pesticides -- so it must be spring.

The best part of this was the top 10 list ("None of the following cases resulted in death...") at the end. My favorites:

A Contra Costa homeowner discovered sewer rats were entering his home through a toilet. He bought an incendiary device intended for gophers and other burrowing pests, and dropped it down a plumbing vent on his roof. The device melted a plastic elbow in the pipe and the roof caught fire, causing $80,000 in damage before firefighters could extinguish the blaze.

In Stanislaus County, a 38-year-old woman found a home remedy for head lice on the Web. She then applied eight ounces of dog flea-and-tick shampoo and olive oil to her scalp, and wrapped her head in cellophane for five hours. Her scalp began to itch and burn. She felt shaky and also experienced nausea and drooling.

A San Francisco physician over-treated his closet with mothballs. When he wore clothes from the closet, he began to feel dizzy, nauseated, and suffered loss of muscular coordination. The first time, he recovered in fresh air. The second time, he went to an emergency room and was hospitalized overnight to rule out a stroke before the problem was traced to excessive mothball fumes.

There was one stupid human trick in here that made me turn red, though, because I've done it:

In Los Angeles County, a woman diluted bleach in a cup to clean it, then forgot about it and went to bed. The next morning, she warmed the cup of liquid and took a sip before remembering the cup contained bleach. In a similar incident, a Sonoma homeowner left a cup of bleach solution that she had used for cleaning on her bathroom counter. She got up at midnight and drank from the cup. Her throat began to burn and she vomited.

I used to use bleach to get rid of the moldy Gatorade residue in my bike bottles. I'd just fill them with dilute bleach and let them sit on the counter for a day or two. Victor once grabbed one of the bottles to use without emptying it. We both learned a lesson...he doesn't use my bottles, and I remember to use the lab rule of labeling unattended secondary containers of chemicals.

Actually, I decided that since bottles go on sale for $1.99, the moldy ones go into the recycle bin. Safer for everyone that way.

Posted by Nic at April 12, 2004 01:46 PM