Microwave popcorn may be hazardous to your health. But our government couldn't care less.

from Grist Magazine's Gristmill blog:




'Popcorn lung' and the collapse of government oversight
While the FDA and EPA look away, noxious fumes from fake butter wreck lungs
Posted by Tom Philpott at 2:25 PM on 04 Sep 2007


Back in May, I drew attention to the remarkable fact that food-industry workers are literally dying from exposure to a key ingredient in microwave popcorn.

The food additive diacetyl (responsible for that "buttery note" in nuked popcorn and also in margarine) emits a noxious fume when heated up -- one that can literally destroy people's lungs in high concentrations. Exposure to diacetyl has been decisively linked to a condition known with chilling accuracy as "bronchiolitis obliterans" -- an irreversible lung disease usually found only in survivors of serious fires.

In that post, I wondered whether consumers of microwave popcorn -- as well as home cooks who sauté with margarine -- might be exposing themselves to serious lung damage, too. Turns out, they may well be -- and federal agencies don't seem to give an unpopped corn kernel about it.


Over on the excellent public-health blog The Pump Handle, David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University, head of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, and a former Clinton Administration public-health official to boot, points to a recent case of bronchiolitis obliterans found in a patient who ate microwave popcorn daily.

The patient's doctor, Cecile Rose of the prestigious National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Colorado, issued a blunt letter describing the case, dated July 18, to all the big national public-health agencies -- the CDC, FDA, OSHA, EPA. Their response, according to Michaels: dead silence.

Concludes Michaels:

It appears that the Bush Administration's efforts to destroy the regulatory system are succeeding; the agencies seem unable to mount a response to information that a well-functioning regulatory system would immediately pursue. The agencies aren't even trying to connect the dots.


Meanwhile, Liz Borkowski, a colleague of Michaels' at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, tells me that the group has tried to get the EPA to release results of its study on popcorn-related diacetyl emissions, even issuing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/4/122839/3554

If the people don't care about diacetyl in the microwave popcorn, how is that the government's problem? :sarcasm:

Memo to everyone who eats: Margarine and shortening are NOT FOOD. They should NOT be eaten. They are synthetic chemicals that your body has no system for processing and deriving benefit from. They should be BANNED.

And now THIS. You heat up the stuff and it destroys your lungs. Need I say I am not the least bit surprised?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18040487/

I've always hated the smell of artificial butter flavoring.

I seem to recall and I think this was at least 5 years ago that 5 workers at the plant were exposed to extremely high levels of this stuff. The only way to save their lives was heart-lung transplants.