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DETROIT
Detroit is the second fattest city in America. It also had the second highest murder rate in the U.S. over a ten-year period three times the average for major American cities. All the killers were acquitted, though: they used the Twinkle defense. |
DIAPERS
A study suggests that disposable diapers can raise the scrotal temperature of baby boys, which may (or may not) lead to infertility and testicular cancer in later life. Switch to cloth: your son would forgive you many things, but not that. |
DIAPHRAGMS
If you use a diaphragm, you're more likely to develop urinary tract infections than women who use other forms of birth control. That doesn't mean the other forms are good for you, of course. |
DIETS
A high-protein diet with lots of red meat can give you heart disease. Low-carbohydrate diets may lead to ketosis, which can cause bad breath, nausea, and a nasty taste in the mouth. And low-fat diets can give you a whole variety of health problems. Looks like you should live on buttered toast (hey, it works for college students). |
DIOXINS
People exposed to dioxins (which are produced by incinerators and were the active ingredient in Agent Orange, used to defoliate forests during the Vietnam War) are more likely to develop diabetes and various cancers, have damaged fertility, and produce fewer boy children. (This is only bad if you want a boy; if you want a girl, dioxin may help, but we still wouldn't recommend it.) And the problem takes a while to go away: thirty years after Agent Orange was last used in Vietnam, some villagers have as much as two hundred times the normal amount of dioxin in their bloodstreams. |
DIRTINESS
Good news for obsessive-compulsives: people with dirty hands have twice as much respiratory illness as people who wash their hands five times a day. |
DISABLED, BEING
Compared with the rest of the population, the 54 million Americans with disabilities are less than half as likely to graduate from high school, only one-seventh as likely to own a home, and three times as likely to live in a household whose annual income is under $15,000. Not only that: even if all these problems could be solved, they'd still be disabled. |
DISASTERS, RECOVERING FROM
The only thing worse than being in a disaster is having been in one. After a natural disaster is over and people are recovering, they can develop anxiety disorders and other mental illnesses, and suicide rates increase. |
DISH CLOTHS
More proof that CLEANLINESS is bad for you: the cloths you use to dry dishes can serve as breeding grounds for the organisms that cause salmonella, campylobacter, and viral infections. |
DIVING
Diving accidents cause 850 paralyzing spinal cord injuries each year, more than three hundred of which happen in home swimming pools. Stop trying to impress that sexy lifeguard—or your sexy neighbor. |
