Cynical Activities - T
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TEXTILE WORKER, BEING A
Here's something new for you to feel guilty about: wearing clothes. Textile workers have an unusually high incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and byssinosis. |
THIN, BEING TOO
If your body is more Homer Simpson than heroically slim, here's the silver lining: being thinner would mean you'd be at greater risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. Men who are seriously underweight are also 77 percent more likely than men of average weight to try suicide, and 25 percent more likely to be seriously depressed. |
THRIFT STORES
Two-thirds of thrift stores in the U.S. sell items considered hazardous by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Examples: unsafe drawstrings on children's outerwear, hair dryers without protection against electrocution, cribs that don't meet current safety standards, and recalled infant car seat carriers. Yet another reason not to be poor. |
TIGER WOODS
Erratic golfers struggling to emulate the power of Tiger Woods's drives have injured spectators or themselves, leading to numerous lawsuits. No matter how you feel as you're standing at thetee, remember, you are not Tiger Woods. (Tiger, this doesn't count you.) |
TOYS
More than seventy thousand children under five were treated in hospital emergency rooms during 2000 for toy-related injuries. Since 1978, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has had to issue recalls of children's toys including animals (stuffed and unstuffed), balls, blocks, boats, cars, clocks, clowns, dolls, flashlights, guns, helicopters, jewelry, jump ropes, music boxes, musical instruments, nursing bottles, planes, play sets, play houses, rocking chairs, stacking rings, tea sets, telephones, trains, trucks, wagons, water slides, and whistles. In October and November 2000 alone, the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups found thirty-four potentially hazardous toys on store shelves. Toys provided to children in doctors' waiting rooms, pediatric wards, and intensive care units can harbor dangerous strains of bacteria. Children exposed to soft plastic toys could absorb phthalates, chemicals that have been linked to kidney damage, are probable carcinogens, and may cause reproductive abnormalities. Now let's see you try and explain all this to your three-year-old when he's whining for the latest cool plastic robot advertised on TV. |
TRAFFIC
Congestion in sixty-eight urban areas of the U.S. during 1999 cost $78 billion and caused commuters 4.5 billion hours of delays, an increase in the average annual traffic delay per person from eleven hours in 1982 to thirty-six hours in 1999. And there are still people out there claiming that they drive because it's quicker than walking. |
TRAINERS, AIR CELLS IN
Basketball players are four times as likely to twist their ankles if they wear trainers with air cells in the heels. This could be because they get distracted by the thought of how much they paid for the things. |
TRAMPOLINES
What goes botng, boing, bolng, oueft? Trampoline injuries including sprains and fractures that are often severe and can result in paralysis or death lead to medical, legal, insurance, and disability costs, and other expenses of nearly $300 million annually. |
TRAUMA
We assume you didn't think trauma was good for you to begin with, but it's even less fun than you thought. Experiencing traumatic events such as child abuse, an auto accident, combat, rape, a school shooting, or an earthquake can result in post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition involving changes in brain chemistry that can last a lifetime and produce hyper-vigilance, anxiety, fearfulness, nightmares, or emotional numbness. |
TRAVEL
In case our wonderful world tour hasn't got the message across yet, here it is: sfay home. One traveler in thirty requires emergency care while abroad. In addition, travelers are subject to gastrointestinal disorders and may acquire diseases such as malaria, hepatitis A and B, typhoid, amebiasis, polio, and meningitis, as well as tuberculosis and rabies. Women traveling outside the U.S., Canada, and Europe during pregnancy have a heightened risk of acute toxoplasmosis. |
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