The Straight Dope 03/10/2006

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 03/10/2006

Dear Cecil:

A fairly sophisticated colleague just completed a five-day water fast,
something he does two-three times a year to "purge his body of toxins."
A Harvard-educated client of mine keeps going on fruit-juice-based
fasts--again to purge the toxins. And an old friend from grad school is
now engaged in a very expensive round of "chelation" to push the toxins
out of her body. Me? I've always thought that this is what we have a
liver and two kidneys for. So, here are my questions: (1) What the heck
are these toxins anyway? (2) Can they be measured? (3) Where do they
come from? (4) How do we get rid of them? --Thomas B. Siegman, New York,
New York

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Cecil replies:

Oh, there are lots of toxins. Ethanol, now. Toss back a shooter or six
at your brother's bachelor party and chances are next morning you won't
be saying, Whoa, it's great to be alive. Nicotine's another. Ozone,
carbon monoxide, and other compounds derived from auto exhaust. Fat in
foods isn't a toxin in the strict sense, but consume it in excess and
from the standpoint of long-term health effects you're slowly poisoning
yourself.

As soon as you begin to list toxins, however, it's obvious the detox
regimens you describe aren't apt to be much good at getting rid of them.
Better you should stop smoking, eat and drink less (and exercise more),
and quit driving that SUV. But how much fun is that? It's more
entertaining to spend a few days and sometimes a pile of money on a
water fast, an herbal diet, chelation or "ayurvedic" therapy, or some
other form of new-agey hokum, after which you can resume your wicked
ways.

Some will object: It's not the known toxins I'm worried about, it's the
ones that sneak up on you. You know the rap--thousands of chemicals have
been introduced into the environment in the past century with little or
no testing; it isn't so much any one poison as the accumulation of
poisons that will kill you; etc. Never mind that the question of
low-level effects remains controversial, that we haven't seen any big
die-offs locally (in contrast, Russia and many eastern European
countries have seen marked declines in life expectancy due to
environmental factors in a much broader sense, e.g., alcoholism), and
that the experts, to the extent they're willing to guess, generally
attribute red-flag indicators of ill health such as cancer to obvious
causes like smoking.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060310.html

CLASSIC #1 - 12/18/1992

Dear Cecil:

What's the deal with the historical hiring of Native American Indians to
work on skyscrapers? Have they all truly been blessed with a lack of
fear for heights? --Robert Wallman, New York  

Cecil replies:

Nah, it's the warrior ethic. Really. But first we'd better have a little
background. It's not just any American Indian who goes into ironwork,
it's mostly Iroquois, specifically Mohawks from the Kahnawake
reservation near Montreal.  

The Mohawks got into the business by happenstance. In 1886 a Canadian
company was building a railroad bridge over the St. Lawrence river near
the Kahnawake reservation. The company hired a number of Mohawks as
day laborers, but found they loved to climb around on the ironwork without
any apparent fear of heights. Since it was difficult to find men with the
moxie for high work, the company decided to try an Indian crew.
"We picked out some and gave them a little training, and it turned out
that putting riveting tools in their hands was like putting ham with eggs,"
a company official later wrote. Mohawks helped build bridges from then on. 

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_060.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC #2 - 12/04/1992

Dear Cecil: 

Everybody has heard that in the early days of radio broadcasting, there
were people who received broadcasts through their teeth. A psychologist
who is writing about it in a forthcoming book told me that he could no
find no actual or authentic case. I recall the play Something for the
Boys in 1944 with Ethel Merman, and the movie of the play with Carmen
Miranda, in which the actresses pretended they heard broadcasts.
Indefatigable researcher that I am, I finally located an item in the
1934 New York Times index, "Ukrainian complains his ears register
broadcast sounds." Is there anything to such stories or are the human
receiving sets candidates for the loony bin? --David Shulman, New York 

Cecil replies:

What's the big deal? Sometimes my ears register broadcast sounds. 
The difference with the Ukrainian (no name given) mentioned in
the two-paragraph Times item you cited is that he was able to do it
without benefit of a radio. A resident of the Brazilian state of Parana,
he was seeking medical help because "his ears, radio-like, register
broadcast sounds; in fact, he is a walking antenna."  

One of the famous Brazil nuts, right? The Times evidently thought so.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_057.html

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