Science Advocacy
Science Advocacy
What would it take for you to eat bugs? I mean, besides the “worm” at the bottom of a tequila bottle. (Your motivation is apparent in that case). Would you do it if it were healthier for you than our typical western diet? Would you do it if it might help to save the world? I decided to explore those questions after watching a video featuring Nicole Kidman munching down a bunch of bugs and calling them delicious.
We already eat bugs
In fact, over 2 billion people eat bugs on purpose, though not typically in western culture. There are even cookbooks dedicated to gourmet insect cooking (here is one, if you are curious). But, most folks in the US eat bugs in our “normal” food unwittingly. Cochineal bugs, a kind of insect related to cicadas and aphids, are commonly used to make a red food dye called “carnelian.” If you have a strong stomach, take a look at the United States Food and Drug Administration’s The Food Defect Levels Handbook and you can see just how many bug bits are allowed in foods commonly produced and consumed in the United States.Continue reading…
Welcome to “chemicals and society”, where we highlight the current understanding of the biological effects and safety of some of the most common chemicals in today’s society.
MSG is monosodium glutamate. “Glutamate”is the salt of glutamic acid, which you may remember from biology class as one of the 20 amino acids that make up the proteins in our body. “Monosodium” means there is a single sodium ion associated with each molecule of glutamic acid. Glutamic acid is the 6th most common amino acid in vertebrates – it makes up about 5.8% of the proteins in your body and the meat that you eat. Sodium is also very common in the diet and inside your body. Another sodium salt, Sodium chloride (table salt) is used in cooking throughout the world.
MSG is used as a flavor enhancer, which means that while it doesn’t have a particularly strong taste on it’s own, it brings out the flavors of other foods – particularly meats and savory foods. It is most commonly used in flavor-enhancing meat tenderizers and Chinese cooking, though you’ll find it in many, many prepared foods like chips, snacks, and soups. It’s in Doritos, Kentucky Fried Chicken, most canned soups, processed meats, Chick-Fil-A sandwhiches, Cheetos, Pringles, and ramen noodles. You get the point.
Stephen Hawking died in March, but his final peer-reviewed paper was published today in The Journal of High Energy Physics. As you might expect from a genius like Hawking, the data presented are… complicated. Basically, it says that if there are, in fact, alternate universes in existence (like Timecop!), they share at least some unifying laws of physics.
Read Dr. Hawking’s paper here.
Welcome to Ask a Scientist, where we answer questions from our readers on a wide range of scientific topics. Got a scientific question? Drop us a line.
Does being cold really make you sick, or is that just an old wives tale? – M.H. Woolwich, ME.
Thanks for the question, M.H. You hear this one all the time – is it true?
The short answer is no. “Sick” in this context is generally assumed to mean the flu or the common cold. The cause of these diseases are viruses – influenza virus and rhinovirus, respectively. You cannot catch a cold or the flu without being exposed to these viruses, no matter now cold you get – even if you go out without a jacket, or don’t wear a hat, or forget your mittens. Now, if you get really really cold, and your core body temperature drops below 95°F (normal is 98.6°F), that’s called hypothermia, which can be very dangerous. If you classify hypothermia as “sick”, then I guess the old saying is true, but not if you are just talking about catching a cold or the flu.
There is a long answer too, and it’s… kinda. While being cold doesn’t make you sick, two side effects of cold weather make it easier for viruses to infect you. The first is the low humidity associated with low temperatures (and indoor heating systems), which dry out the mucus membranes of your nose, making it more susceptible to infection. The second is that cold weather tends to make people spend more time indoors in close contact with other people, where they are more likely to spread viruses.
A few years ago, a group of researches at Yale University also demonstrated that cells and mice at lower temperatures have a more difficult time fighting off viruses. It’s not entirely clear if this same effect occurs in humans, and if so, how much it might increase the odds of someone catching a cold or the flu, but it’s pretty cool.
Also, the author’s assumption is that cold air in your lungs and airways was the culprit here. When you think about this, it means that going out in the cold might increase your chances of catching a cold or the flu regardless of how cold a person might actually feel. In other words, even if you are bundled up in a coat, hat, scarf, and mittens, you are still breathing the same cold air when you go outside, so your risk of getting sick would be unaffected by how you dress or how cold you actually felt. The same is true for the effects of low humidity in cold weather.
So in the end, even if cold weather might fundamentally increase your risk of getting sick, being cold (or not dressing warmly enough) will not. The best thing you can do is wash your hands, avoid friends and family who are sick, and of course, get the flu vaccine.
You’ve probably heard of essential oils. They are commonly used in aroma therapy, but some people also recommend that essential oils be applied topically (to your skin) or ingested (alone or used as ingredients in food). What exactly is an essential oil, are they good for you, and are they safe? Here’s the skinny.
An essential oil is an extract from a plant. Specifically, it is a mix of volatile chemicals (chemicals with a low boiling point) that are extracted using distillation or solvents. The term “essential” in this case refers to the “essence” of the plant in question – a nod to that fact that essential oils from a given plant generally smell and/or taste like that plant. The essential oils from citrus fruit, for instance are generally very citrusy (which is a real word). “Essential” in this context does not mean that these oils are essential for life or good nutrition – you do not need essential oils in your diet. They are called oils because they are generally hydrophobic (they don’t mix with water), but they do not generally resemble the non-volatile oils we are used to interacting with, like cooking and fuel oils.
Because essential oils are prepared by distilling or extracting plant material, their actual content will depend on the plants they are produced from and the exact process used to extract them. Essential oils contain hundreds or thousands of different chemicals. While essential oils from the same type of plant made by different manufacturers will be similar, they can vary quite a bit, and no two extracts are likely to be exactly the same. There are also no government regulations controlling how these extracts are produced, or how pure the oils should be. It’s basically “let the buyer beware.”
Welcome to Bad Science on the Internet! Here, we highlight some of the crazy and sometimes dangerous stuff people post online, and then we give you the facts.
Several retailers sell something called miracle mineral solution for the treatment of numerous ailments, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, the flu, autism, and cancer. It’s also known as master mineral solution, MMS, the CD protocol, or CDS. There’s a whole book about how great it is!
Of course.
MMS DOES NOT WORK. FOR ANYTHING. DON’T TAKE IT. EVER.
It sure is! MMS is made by adding sodium chlorite to acidic water, which produces chlorine dioxide, which is bleach. Yes, ITS MADE OF BLEACH.
Generally, it is recommended that you drink MMS, which its just as dangerous as it sounds. Drinking bleach will cause nausea, vomiting, and (if you drink enough) death. The bottle of bleach in your basement has a warning label on it telling you not to drink it. MMS is no different, in fact, it’s more powerful than the bleach you buy in stores. It’s Super Bleach!
Look, most people know instinctively not to drink bleach, but just to put it in context, here’s how chlorine dioxide stacks up with other nasty stuff in terms of acute toxicity, as measured by the average lethal doses (LD50’s) in rats.
Glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) = 5,600 mg/kg
Formaldehyde (carcinogen used to preserve bodies) = 500 mg/kg
Chlorox bleach (hypochlorite) = 192 mg/kg
Thiopental sodium (used for lethal injections) = 117 mg/kg
Chlorine dioxide (ingredient in MSS) =94 mg/kg
Cyanide (rat poison) = 1.5 mg/kg
So the active ingredient in MSS is more toxic than glyphosate, formaldehyde, “regular” bleach, and the stuff they use in lethal injections. On the plus side, it’s not quite as bad as eating rat poison, so there’s that.
There is also a small group of people who believe that if MMS is given as an enema it can cure autism. This is absolutely not true, and is just as dangerous as you might think a bleach enema would be. There is no cure for autism. If anyone tells you there is, they are lying to you.
The idea of using MMS to treat disease was “invented” by a guy named Jim Humble, who left the church of Scientology (presumably because it wasn’t crazy enough) to found what he calls the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, which promotes the use of MMS to treat disease. Jim claims to have discovered MMS when he was in Africa in the 1990’s and used it to treat his malaria. He self-published a book, and a small, dangerous community of adherents have been touting it’s benefits ever since. Besides the unsupported ramblings of Jim Humble and his followers, there is not a shred of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of MMS, and a whole bunch of evidence telling us that drinking and “cleansing” with super bleach is incredibly dangerous.
The governments of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others have all issued warnings against the use of MMS, and there have been several cases in the US of the government filing criminal charges against people offering MMS for sale as a medical treatment and shutting them down. This makes sense – unlike a lot of other fake “alternative” medical treatments, MMS is extremely dangerous, and profiting off of false claims about it’s nonexistent health benefits is a crime in most countries. People have died from MMS.
Maybe the idea of “cleaning” our insides makes sense in some basic way. It would be great if we could bleach our bodies clean like we do our kitchens, but that is not the world we live in. If you drink enough of this stuff, or squirt enough of it up your butt, it will kill you. Even if it doesn’t kill you, the malaria, autism, HIV, cancer, whatever you were using it for, will still be there.
Welcome to Ask a Scientist, where we answer questions from our readers on a wide range of scientific topics. Got a scientific question? Drop us a line.
Is urine really sterile? Can you use it to disinfect things? – SF, The Woodlands, TX
Thanks, SF! Let’s talk about pee!
The answer to your first question is a very clear “no.” Urine is not sterile. Sure, it’s sterile as when it’s first made in your kidneys, but then it passes through your urethra, and like pretty much every part of you that comes in contact with the outside world, your urethra contains bacteria, and some of them end up in your urine. In some cases (like urinary tract or bladder infections) the bacterial levels can be quite high, but in general they are low – not sterile, but probably safe enough to drink, at least from a bacterial contamination standpoint. However…
It’s never a good idea to drink your own urine. Some survivalists say they have done it, including that guy who had to cut off his own arm in Utah after getting pinned under a boulder, but it’s probably not something he made a habit of – and for good reason. While urine is 95% water, the other 5% is stuff that is not good for you. This 5% contains urea, excess electrolytes and other stuff your body is trying to get rid of. To put this in context, salt water from the ocean contains about 96.5% water with 3.5% salt. If you drink salt water, the salt just dehydrates you, defeating the purpose of drinking water in the first place. Over time, if you drink enough of it, seawater can kill you. Urine will do the same thing, only it is also full of urea and other body waste products and is totally gross. Don’t drink urine, ever.
You’ve probably seen the stories, juries awarding people millions of dollars because they developed cancer after years of using talcum powder. Does talc really cause cancer? Should you stop using baby powder? Is it time to panic? What the deal? Let’s talk talc.
Talc is a mineral, also called talcum, or magnesium silicate. It Is mined directly from the ground in places like Australia and France, and processed for use in many consumer products. Talc is used for a whole lot of things. It is commonly found in plastics, cosmetics, paint, rubber, and ceramics. Because it’s good at absorbing water, it is used in baby powder and in the “chalk” that keeps basketball players or rock climbers hands dry. Because of it’s high shear strength, it’s often used as a solid lubricant. It’s even approved for use as a food additive and a inactive ingredient in pharmaceutical tablets in most countries. Talc is everywhere.
The link between talc and cancer has been the subject of intense research for many years. Most of the early focus was on it’s role in causing lung cancer in people who breath it in – particularly people that work in talc mines. Several large studies have been run, and the results have been mixed – some show a link between lung cancer and working in talc mines, while others don’t. However, regardless of the outcomes, these studies are generally recognized as inconclusive because of two major confounding factors. The first is that talc generally forms under similar conditions to asbestos, and can therefore be right next to, or even mixed in with asbestos when it is mined. The other confounding factor is radon – a radioactive breakdown product of Uranium which can build up in enclosed spaces below ground (like your basement). Both asbestos and radon very clearly cause lung cancer, so it’s hard in scientific studies to tell if talc is causing cancer or if it’s just exposure to asbestos and radon that is the problem.
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