Scientists claim to have solved the mystery deaths in China

Families, who make their living by collecting and selling the fungi, eat the Little White as it has no commercial value – it is too small and turns brown shortly after being picked.

A campaign to warn people against eating the tiny mushrooms has dramatically reduced the number of deaths. There have been no reported deaths so far this year.

It is not just about the mushroom. The article ends with a twist.

…the toxins could be acting together with high concentrations of barium, a heavy metal, in the local water supply

Uh, that does not sound very good either. Will there be a warning about the water too? Barium is said to cause the symptoms blamed on the mushrooms.

All water or acid soluble barium compounds are poisonous. At low doses, barium acts as a muscle stimulant, while higher doses affect the nervous system, causing cardiac irregularities, tremors, weakness, anxiety, dyspnea and paralysis.

Some are not affected by it, apparently, while others are very sensitive, which must make the investigation difficult. This new killer mushroom discovery sounds much more interesting than yet another pollution story, but perhaps it will still bring attention to the need for better water quality.

Yahoo! news in the UK reports that a Fake Bidder Sentenced For eBay Scam

Sometimes if Barrett actually won the bidding he would leave positive feedback about himself.

By using this process he managed to sell two Mercedes vehicles, a pie and pasty warmer, a cash register, a refrigerated display counter, three mobile phones, a Land Rover and a digital camera.

His plan only unravelled after a buyer complained about a van he had been sold and Barrett’s second identity was discovered.

A pie warmer had multiple bids?

He was sentenced to 250 hours community service and fined £5,000.

The judge said the accused’s “conduct strikes at the heart” of on-line commerce. Strong words with a real conviction. However, I do not see this man, or his conduct, truly affecting the “heart” of on-line commerce. How much fraud will be reduced by sending him to community service? I guess now we can feel safer to bid on pie warmers.

An Arizona restaurant that tried to promote business by serving Lion meat (mixed with beef) burgers has fired up controversy instead. The restaurant believed it was sourcing meat from a respectable source, but did no investigation on its own. You probably can guess what happened next.

A reporter for CNN traced the meat to a company owner convicted for illegal sources as well as product misrepresention:

Czimer’s exotic-meat dealings have landed him in hot water before. Back in 2003, Chicago newspapers covered his conviction and six-month prison sentence for selling meat from federally protected tigers and leopards. Czimer admitted to purchasing the carcasses of 16 tigers, four lions, two mountain lions and one liger — a tiger-lion hybrid — which were skinned, butchered and sold as “lion meat,” for a profit of more than $38,000.

Czimer’s defense is the best part of the story. He tells the reporter to turn a blind eye, just like he normally would for other food.

He’s willing to take a hands-off approach: “Do you question where chickens come from when you go to Brown’s Chicken or Boston Market?” he asked.

Exactly. There is a long tail (pun not intended) of trust implied with food prepared and supplied by restaurants. Trust also is involved when sourcing meat from ranchers.

With this in mind, note that Czimer’s website claims they sell game meat to avoid “harmful residue” and as an alternative to “domestic meats”.

Since the late l950’s the Czimer family pursued in expanding the choices of game meats, game birds and sea foods to the environmentally sensitive patients.

Oh, how things have changed! Czimer is now the one telling you to turn a blind eye. They will sell you meat, just don’t asked where it is from or how it was produced.

I hope that someone ordering lion would care about authenticity and value, per Czimer’s original sales pitch. Likewise customers should be able to verify that they are not purchasing illegally obtained meat from federally protected animals.

Just the other day I was in an airport and noticed a Pete’s store with a sign for natural fruit smoothies. I asked to see the ingredients. After a brief moment of digging through the cabinets and drawers the staff presented me with a greasy-looking bottle that listed artificial colors and chemical sweeteners. That definitely was not what I was expecting and I valued it far below the price they were asking. The staff seemed genuinely interested to find out the ingredients themselves for the first time and they smiled when I said “no thank you”.

Bottled water in America is big business. Two years ago a quarter of the world’s bottled water was sold in the US for over $12 billion. Some might say that two years is all water can last, judging by the expiration date printed on the bottle.

Sadly, the expiration date was printed on water bottles for reasons unknown. Several sites say the date was to comply with a poorly written law in New Jersey that has since changed. That seems hard to believe and I have found no evidence that it existed. In any case (pun not intended) an expiration date certainly does not relate to safety or health of the water.

Here is the FDA statement on the subject:

Bottled water is considered to have an indefinite safety shelf life if it is produced in accordance with CGMP and quality standard regulations and is stored in an unopened, properly sealed container. Therefore, FDA does not require an expiration date for bottled water.

Those paying 1000 times the price of water from the tap perhaps would be first in line to want an indefinite life. The DHS and American Red Cross have a different recommendation:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the American Red Cross both encourage the public to change their bottled water every six months.

I suspect the DHS and Red Cross really want to ensure people actually have water, or to help them remember where their water is stored. They say the six months is targeted at people who bottle their own water, to ensure that bacterium does not form. This makes bottled water seem like the less-risky option again because of the process, but the bottles themselves are another matter.

The PET (#1 or polyethylene terephthalate) used for hand-held containers and HDPE (#2 or high-density polyethylene) for big containers is said to break down from chemicals, heat and UV as well as absorb materials around it. Coca-Cola has found their Dasani bottles introduce flavor to the water over time:

Susan McDermott, says the company has done research on its own Dasani brand showing that the taste of its bottled water changes after its one-year expiration date. But, she adds: “It is probably not something the average person will notice.”

Perhaps Coca-Cola could start to market Dasani water as better with age? Instead of an expiration date, they should print the date it is bottled like a fine wine. Imagine a Dasani bottle of water from 2006 that has been stored in an oak barrel…