This week in health news, from UC San Diego’s Scott LaFee
Azodicarbonamide is a whitening agent and dough conditioner used in breads to make them lighter and fluffier. It’s also an additive in rubber shoes, presumably to make you lighter and fluffier, and in yoga mats, where maybe it helps you see the fluffy light. The chemical is banned in foods in the European Union but still used in the United States in some processed bread products.“What happened,” asked his friend.
“I got really sick after drinking milk with cream,” said the fellow. “My stomach was churning for a while, but now I’m feeling butter.”Ever walk into a room and forget why you’re there or what you’re doing because you’ve got too much on your mind? Increasing forgetfulness due to a modern, hectic lifestyle or information overload is called “subjective cognitive impairment.” Some have dubbed it “busy life syndrome.
Spread by fouled water, victims died after hours of cramps, diarrhea and vomiting. The disease primarily struck crowded, unsanitary slums; the city’s elite having fled to the countryside. In the U.S., the epidemic largely broke by the end of the year.The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 2021, the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to an international team for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters to test whether odors produced by the audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use or bad language in the movie the audience is watching.
Their findings, in short: No. However, they did determine that the volatile organic compound isoprene might be an indicator worthy of additional study. Emissions of isoprene, which is also emitted by plants, reliably went up and down among children and adolescents, suggesting it might be a useful metric for determining G-rated films.