Category Archives: Wacky and Weird

‘I’m covered in poo’ Transport Canada investigates feces falling from sky

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CTV News reports Transport Canada is investigating two cases of cars in Kelowna, B.C. being struck with suspected human feces falling from the sky.

The first incident happened May 9 and covered Susan Allen’s car, with its sunroof open, both inside and out.

“I started crying (and) I’m like: ‘I’m covered in poo,’” Allen told CTV Vancouver on Thursday.

“(The) car was just inundated with poop. It was just falling from the sky. You could feel the drops hitting you. When I looked up there was nothing above but a plane flying.”

Three days later, a man found a similar mess on his car, which was parked in his driveway.

Transport Canada said it is investigating the alleged incidents.

“Transport Canada is collecting and reviewing information regarding the reported incidents of May 9 and May 12 and, as such, is not in a position to provide more details,” Daniel Savoie, spokesperson for Transport Canada, said in a statement.

The Kelowna International Airport said it has narrowed it down to one of three planes that were passing over that area at both times.

Modeling food held out on a hot day

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The unofficial start of the summer is this weekend in the U.S. – Memorial day. Folks will be bbqing, cooking out, grilling out, whatever.

There’s a recommendation from USDA that on a hot day, above 90F/32C that food shouldn’t sit out for more than an hour. I couldn’t find a good reference for this. So I started texting Don.

He wasn’t answering. (I found out later it was because he was doing an interview with CBC, that’s a radio/TV network in Canada).

I started looking at a Conference for Food Protection document on how to handle food decisions at retail when the power goes out. Not exactly what I was looking for – all the modeling starts at 41F and doesn’t get as hot as I was looking for.

Then Don finally answered and suggested this paper on Salmonella in cut tomatoes.

Getting warmer.

I finally got into Combase and generated a couple of no-lag growth models for staph (in something like potato salad) and Salmonella. 

The staph model doesn’t go as high as 90F/32C so it’s a bit conservative different. But the Salmonella model shows a 1 log increase in just over an hour.

So yeah, hot days matter.

 

It’s not the water I’m worried about

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The situation that Life Hacker’s Nick Douglas presented to me was (I’m paraphrasing here slightly): hey, I’m gonna leave a glass of water out over night and I know it’s not going to be a problem after a couple of hours, but I can’t leave that water there for a few weeks can I, because it will go bad, right?

My answer (paraphrased as well) I guess it depends what you mean by bad. The water will probably taste different the longer it sits there. Yeast, mold and algae might float into it, but as far as pathogens go, my take is that it’s really low risk.

I told him that the water wasn’t the issue, it’s what gets introduced to the water like food debris or some other nutrient source. And then a pathogen. Or poop. Poop has both.

My quote was, ‘What would matter is if, like, someone had poop on their finger and stuck it in there.’

It’s not like I thought water rots, OK? I just thought that there’s enough bacteria floating around a home, or in tap water, or on your lips when you take a sip, that given a month alone in a glass, it might grow and then make you sick. But, as food safety specialist Dr. Benjamin Chapman tells me in a mildly embarrassing phone call, it won’t.

But there must be some way it could, right? Yes, Dr. Chapman says, if you didn’t wash the glass properly, and left a nutrient like juice or other sugary remnants. 

But even if you’ve drunk out of the glass, getting your mouth on it, leaving a lip print, and then leaving out the glass — even then, he says, you’re not going to poison yourself with your own mouth bacteria.

Obviously, if the water supply is contaminated, all bets are off. If it was toxic when it left the tap, it’s still toxic after sitting out. But apparently, as long as it started out fine, even super-gross-tasting old water is healthy to drink, and I’m an ignorant hydrophobe. Fine. But I’m not alone. I only got curious because cooking blog The Kitchn asked the same question — or maybe they were stating the obvious for rubes like me.

Febreze freshens up Alabama after ‘poop train’

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Any hockey player knows the stench of equipment: Many of us carry around that stench with pride (although I’m not sure of the microbiological safety).

And when our partners or lab mates complain, we whip out the Febreze.

Magnify that problem.

How do you rid an entire town of the stench left by 200 poop-filled shipping containers? Apparently the answer is simple: you spray it with Febreze.

Carloads of the odor-eliminating products, produced by Procter & Gamble, were recently delivered to residents in Parrish, Alabama after a New York City “poop train” was hauled away on April 17. The disgusting cargo had been sitting in rail cars near Parrish for over two months while it waited to be transferred to a landfill 20 miles from the small town.

“At Febreze, we believe that no one should be immersed in stink and are confident that our lineup of odor-eliminating products could finally bring a breath of fresh air to the good people of Parrish,” Procter & Gamble’s Mandy Ciccarella said, via AL.com.

Many residents compared the overwhelming stink to trainloads of dead bodies. Some added that the smell was making them sick on a regular basis.

“The running joke was when the poop train came that we just needed to drop Febreze on top of the train,” a Parrish resident said in a video shared on social media by Febreze.

New York has been pushing its poop on other states after the federal government made it illegal for the city to dump waste in the ocean in 1988. The foul-smelling trains have been heading south after two landfills in Pennsylvania stopped accepting the sewage, according to CBS Sacramento.

Parrish officials have fought back against future “poop trains” entering their town by denying a business licence to the operator of Big Sky landfill. “The poop train brought the funk and Febreze came by to freshen us up,” one of the small town’s 960 residents added.

Tom Wolfe, chronicler of life

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I get it that most people think microbial food safety is some bizarre niche about bugs and barfing.

But I’ve had enough people tell me their worst barf story that maybe there’s some storytelling interest.

According to Kurt Andersen of The New York Times, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities who died at age 87, made everyone talk about him.

Tom Wolfe made every reader like a friend.

Who hasn’t gone to university with the pretty partner who was too good for you (I Am Charlotte Simmons), who hasn’t tripped out on acid (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and who hasn’t thought themselves a master of Wall Street (or acamedia or anywhere else; The Bonfire of the Vanities).

I had this job in 1989, smashing rock.

I sat in this tiny, elevated cubicle in the middle of a sparse gravel pit, and any stones that became lodged in the metal sifters, I had to go out with a sledgehammer and dislodge.

I spent my spare time reading Bonfire of the Vanities, great book, terrible movie.

It was at a cottage rental about 1991 that I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and my best friend decided he didn’t want to hang out with me anymore: Don’t invite close friends to cottages, it doesn’t end well.

Metal is a risk in food, even in Australia

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Mark Donaldson of the Wanneroo Times writes, a Currambine food outlet, which has now shut down, has been fined for a food safety breach after a customer bit into a piece of metal while eating a meal last year.

DS Business Venture, which ran Pastacup at Currambine Central, was due to stand trial in Joondalup Magistrates Court today but changed its plea to guilty.

No one from the business appeared in court to face the charge of “a person must not sell food that is unsuitable”.

The City of Joondalup prosecutor said a customer bought a three cheese ravioli from the store in May, 2017.

The complainant was eating a meal and bit into something hard, damaging a tooth.

Investigators found it was a rivet that had fallen off a cheese grater.

Magistrate Edward de Vries considered it a minor food safety case but said the customer “would have been in some pain biting into a metal rivet”.

He fined the business $3000 plus costs of another $3000.

The prosecutor conceded there was little chance of recovering the fine now the business had shut down.

Who throws poop? This Canadian woman at a Tim Hortons

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To those not familiar with The Guess Who, Neil Young or Drake, you may not know the name Tim Hortons, a coffee and doughnut mega-chain started by the late Toronto Maple Leafs’ defenceman and his business partner, a cop.

You may also not understand the phrase, double-double (Chapman’s favorite).

When I had those daughters in Guelph, I would take them to the local Tims after a 6-7 a.m. practice.

I always refused to buy the coffee because I could make better stuff at home.

Sure the grad student helped coach, but he could get his own Tims.

I got whatever daughter was involved that morning a doughnut, and sometimes a hot chocolate, so they wouldn’t feel too nauseous by 11 a.m. and could make it through the school day (of course I made their lunches too, but ya gotta get over that morning hump).

Now Tims has a different kind of notoriety.

According to KRON in Oakville, Ontario, Canada (KRON) a Canadian woman was caught on camera pulling down her pants, doing her business, and throwing the end result at a Tim Horton’s employee who denied her access to the restroom. 

A spokesperson for Tim Horton’s told BuzzFeed that some of its restaurants have a “restricted access policy for restrooms to ensure the well-being of our guests.” 

The spokesperson said their current understanding of the situation is that the woman was denied access to the restroom due to “past behavior.” 

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (if you’re the RCMP where’s your horse?) told BuzzFeed the woman was “briefly detained after the incident” and prosecutors will determine if the woman will face charges when she appears in court at a later date.

Just last week, Starbucks told employees to let anyone use the restroom, even if they haven’t bought anything, as it reviews its policies and tries to restore its reputation after the arrest of two black men at a coffee shop in Philadelphia.