Word: poisons
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When Is a Poison? Nobody knows how many of the additives now in use have been fully tested. Best guess: about 150 are tried and true, will cause no problem, e.g., old familiars such as sodium benzoate (preservative in foods and many soft drinks), and other items less recognizable but long widely used-calcium or sodium propionate (mold inhibitor in bread) and butylated hydroxy anisole (antioxidant to keep fats from going rancid). Another 150 are expected to pass the tests, but 100 or more are in a medical no-man's land...
Sometimes it came deep in the earth where Borinage miners scratch out coal from overworked shafts in constant expectation of cave-ins, poison gas, flooding, fire and explosion. More often it came on the grey, slag-heaped surface as miners coughed out their lives. Emile Zola saw the Borinage in the 1880s and poured its horror into his powerful classic, Germinal. A few aged miners still remember the emaciated, stubble-bearded Dutch preacher named Vincent Van Gogh, who lived in one of their hovels, held services and sketched their bowed bodies with fever-palsied hands...
...Memphis, a sign at the Cherokee golf course said: POISON ON GREENS. DO NOT PUT BALL IN MOUTH...
Bombs & Clips. Mikoyan never seemed to mind the necessity for extra security precautions, such as checking food with Geiger counters (to guard against attempts to poison him with radioactive substances) or the telephone bomb threat that delayed his airplane out of Chicago. In fact, he appeared even philosophical as, from place to place, he was dogged by bitter Hungarian and Ukrainian pickets, who threw stones, snowballs and eggs (no direct hits) in disregard of President Eisenhower's call for a show of courtesy. At first, he thought that "it is like a comedy," but by the time he landed...
...Japan, where 23,500 people killed themselves last year, and the suicide rate increases by 5% a year, Candy Salesman Akira Emoto, 31. was long regarded as a candidate for the statistics column. He brooded, he ate sleeping pills and last summer he tried to poison himself. "Just you wait." he told friends in the southern city of Kokonoe, "very soon I shall do something that will startle the nation...