| Frighteningly Freaky Facts
Bizarre and creepy health tidbits you may not know.
By AMY NEFF ROTH
healthy living
This Halloween you don't have to look far to find tales of horror and genuine creepiness. Just consider your own body, all the gross stuff it does and all the appalling things that can happen to it.
Danger lurks in every kitchen sponge, in every furry critter, in every inviting hot tub and in every home-baked cookie. So read on for a collection of icky, bizarre and otherwise disturbing health facts collected online - if you dare.
You are what you eat
If you’re like the average American, you probably eat a pound or two of bugs each year. More specifically, a pound or two of insect parts, ground up into everything from peanut butter to frozen chopped broccoli. Don’t worry, though. In many cases, bug tidbits make the food more nutritious, adding protein, vitamins and minerals. In fact, 80 percent of the world’s population chooses to eat bugs.
– Source: Ohio State Extension Fact Sheet
Some bugs allowed
The Federal Food and Drug Administration recognizes the inevitability of bugs in the food supply. Its standards allow, for example, 80 insect fragments in every 100 grams of chocolate (about the size of the average bar), 60 mites in every 100 grams of frozen broccoli and two maggots in every 100 grams of tomato sauce.
– Source: Article on showme.uk about
a Birmingham, England, science museum
exhibit on eating insects
So that’s what they mean by ‘artificial color’
Some bugs are intentionally added to foods. Many foods colored red or pink get their color from carmine or cochineal extract, which is a polite way of saying crushed female cochineal beetles and their eggs, pictured above. You’ll find it in everything from Yoplait strawberry yogurt to Good & Plenty candies. Some products list the coloring among their ingredients, but others just list “artificial color.”
– Source: BusinessWeekonline
What’s sleeping with you?
Your bed can be a crowded place. You’re sharing your mattress with anywhere from 100,000 to 10 million dust mites. These microscopic critters typically thrive even in the cleanest houses, lurking not just in the bed, but wherever there are dust-collecting fabrics and furniture. For many people this isn’t a problem. But in sensitive individuals, the mite’s decaying corpses and feces can trigger allergies and asthma attacks... And you probably do a good job of feeding those dust mites. They feast on the 10 billion dead skin cells that flake off your body each day.
– Source: The Science
Museum in London
Germs at work
More than 400 times more bacteria live on the average office desk than an average toilet seat. A 2002 University of Arizona study found the germiest of 12 workplace surfaces studied were, in order, telephones, desks, water-fountain handles, microwave-door handles and computer keyboards. The cleanest were toilet seats and photocopier surfaces.
– Source: Press release on marketwire.com
Our animal friends?
Cats may seem sweet and cuddly, but they’ve developed their own form of germ warfare. It’s called cat-scratch fever. Most people know that they can get it by being bitten or scratched by a cat. But you also can get it if you stroke cat fur that the cat recently has washed with saliva then rub your eyes.
And which cats are the most dangerous? Kittens, of course.
Normally, cat-scratch fever isn’t a big deal. But occasionally it can lead to infections of the liver, spleen, bones, joints or lungs; a lingering high fever without other symptoms; an eye infection; inflammation of the brain; or seizures.
– Sources: KidsHealth Web site; familydoctor.org
Pucker up
at your own risk
What could be as chaste as true love’s kiss? Almost anything, apparently. Mouths are full of bacteria, fungus, viruses, bits of food, mucus that drips down from above and more than 100,000,000 microscopic critters, all of which could end up in your mouth when you kiss someone. And the white blood cells in their spit could even attack your mouth.
– Source: Grossology,
a Web site and related books devoted to making science interesting to kids
More bugs
in your bed
After being nearly wiped out in
this country in the middle of the last century, bed bugs have been making a comeback, turning up in homes – clean and dirty – across the country, in luxury hotels and dorm rooms.
– Source: Transcript from a
March 19, 2006,
episode of “Dateline”
Danger of tapeworms
Beware of gefilte fish, the Jewish specialty made of freshwater fish, spices, eggs, salt and matzo meal. An article published in the New York Times in August chronicles the struggles of a woman to run her kosher household while suffering from abdominal cramps, distention, diarrhea, growing weakness, shortness of breath, lethargy and fatigue. It turns out she had profound anemia, but doctors were stumped as to why until one thought to ask if she ever tasted the raw fish while making gefilte fish.
It turns out she had picked up a fish tapeworm from the gefilte fish. Once diagnosed and treated, the woman discharged a 3-foot tapeworm. These tapeworms, the largest parasites to plague humans, can grow as long as 30 feet and live up to 20 years.
– Source: The New York Times
Germs that abound around us
The dirtiest place in your house is the kitchen and the dirtiest object is the kitchen sponge or dish rag. Yes, the very item you use to wipe away the dirt actually tends to spread germs all around your kitchen. In a University of Arizona study back in the 1990s, one home showed consistent heavy contamination on all kitchen surfaces until the sixth day, when most surfaces suddenly turned up clean. The family had switched to a new sponge.
The Arizona study found up to 10,000 colony-forming units of bacteria in a millimeter of moisture around a kitchen sink and up to 10 million in a milliliter of moisture wrung from a kitchen sponge. In fact, bacteria don’t start to die off a wet sponge for two weeks, making the microwave a smart choice for killing them faster.
– Sources: ScienceNewsOnline, WebMD
Fear of fingernails
Nurses’ fingernails make a great breeding ground for bacteria that could be transferred to vulnerable patients, according to a 2000 study. The study found that one potentially lethal bacteria, pseudomonas aeruginosa, is more frequently found on people with artificial nails, nail wraps, nail tips and other cosmetic nail treatments. Newborns, people with burns, intravenous-drug addicts, patients with cystic fibrosis, acute leukemia patients and people who have had organ transplants are particularly vulnerable.
– Source: CNN online archives
Eaten alive while you sleep
In the wee hours of the night, while most humans are asleep, bed bugs creep out of bedroom cracks and crevices and pierce human flesh with their sharp beaks so they can feed on human blood, usually for around three to five minutes. Then their engorged bodies crawl away to hide in a crack, often in bed frames, mattresses or clutter in the bedroom, while they digest their meal. While feeding, they inject a fluid that can make skin swell and itch.
– Sources: Cornell Cooperative Extension Web site, Harvard School of Public Health
Bats can be sneaky
Don’t be afraid of bats because they’re likely to swoop low and get tangled in your hair. That’s a myth. Be afraid because they can pass on rabies, a disease that is always fatal, without your realizing you were ever bitten. That’s because bats can bite sleeping people without waking them. So if you wake up and find a bat in your room, or in the room of an unattended child or see a bat near a mentally impaired or intoxicated person, lock the bat up in a room or capture it so it can be tested for rabies. Most recent rabies cases were caused by bats.
– Source: Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention Web site
What’s swimming with you?
The average person carries around .14 grams of feces on his or her bottom. That makes it easy for someone with diarrhea to contaminate the swimming pool or even a waterpark. And those aren’t the only germs making it into the water. Others can cause skin, ear, eye, respiratory, neurologic and wound infections.
But pools are chlorinated, so they’re safe, right? Well, sort of. Chlorine does kill most germs in less than an hour, but some can survive for days.
Cute but dangerous
Raccoons are so cute that it’s tempting to raise babies as pets. Not a good idea. They bite. They can carry rabies. And they carry intestinal raccoon roundworm, which people can pick up by accidentally ingesting infected eggs from the soil, water or objects contaminated by raccoon feces. Infected raccoons, who do not get sick, live throughout the United States.
Although only 25 human cases have been reported as of 2003, it is believed that many infections are never diagnosed. Five of the known patients have died.
– Source: Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention Web site
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