Tuesday Open Thread

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Wow, it’s friggin’ hot! I’m glad I don’t work outdoors. Everyone stay hydrated!

Thank you Slate for answering this burning question: what happens if you eat the silica desiccant labeled “DO NOT EAT?” The answer is nothing, with a few caveats.

So why all the doom and gloom on the labeling? Because a surprising number of people, especially children, mistake the packets for food. In 2009, some 38,000 people reported ingesting desiccants, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Of those, 34,000 were under the age of six. In most cases, poison control officials simply tell the parents not to worry. But like any other substance, silica gel could conceivably cause problems if eaten in large quantities, especially by small children or adults with neuromuscular problems that make it hard to swallow. The bigger danger, however, is that many children don’t just eat the beads; they eat the whole packet. In that case, the hazard isn’t poison, it’s choking.

A couple of last caveats: While silica gel is the most common desiccant approved for use in food products, other, less benign substances are occasionally used in other types of consumer products. Also, a few varieties of silica gel come coated with cobalt chloride, which is considered toxic. The U.S. National Library of Medicine (part of the National Institutes of Health) deems swallowing a large amount at once not too dangerous, but grants that it may cause nausea and vomiting. For that reason, experts recommend calling a poison control center if you ingest a “do not eat” packet, just to be safe. The nationwide hot line for any poison emergency in the United States is 1-800-222-1222.

Just remember, your new shoes are not coming with free candy but if you eat it you’ll probably be fine. Do keep it away from children, especially small ones.

Oh, they went there. In West Virginia, a law firm criticized a new report showing that mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining had harmful health effects on children by blaming inbreeding:

It’s no surprise that lawyers from the firm Crowell & Moring are attacking the latest study by Melissa Ahern and West Virginia University’s Michael Hendryx indicating that people who live near mountaintop removal operations face a greater risk of birth defects.

But the internet posting from four of the firm’s lawyers — Clifford J. Zatz, William L. Anderson, Kirsten L. Nathanson, and Monica M. Welt — was, well, here’s what it said:

The study failed to account for consanquinity [sic], one of the most prominent sources of birth defects.

The law firm did delete the post with an explanation:

UPDATE 2: Nicole Quigley, a spokeswoman for Crowell & Moring, has issued this comment in response to my questions about their webpost and its disappearance –

Our website alert is not intended to reflect views of the National Mining Association, but is an attempt to identify certain potential weaknesses of the study in question. Consanguinity is one of a number of commonly addressed issues in studies of this type, regardless of geography. Scientists address this consideration regularly because it can matter to scientific conclusions, and do so regardless of locale. We did not raise this issue with particular reference to any region, and we did not mean to imply any such thing. That said, we apologize for any offense taken, as none was intended. We can appreciate the view that our alert may not have provided enough context to explain the scientific points we aimed to address, and so have removed it from our site.

This to me is your classical gaffe, accidentally saying what you really think. It even has a requisite sorry if you were offended non-apology.