Warning: Cape Does Not Enable User To Fly

I was cleaning the kitchen floor today (don’t faint), and I started thinking about French fries. No, there weren’t any lurking in obscure corners. It all started when I read the WARNING on the back of the lemon ammonia bottle, the one about not combining ammonia with any product containing chlorine bleach, because if you do it will “CAUSE THE RELEASE OF TOXIC GASES THAT CAN BE FATAL.” (As an aside, why do they try to add “aroma” to straight ammonia? It’s not like there’s any hope of actually making it smell any less noxious.)

I love how, in this litigious society, where they have to put warnings on Halloween costume Batman capes that it does not enable the user to fly, they still leave chemicals casually on supermarket shelves that, if combined with other common supermarket chemicals, can create chlorine gas. Yes, as in World War I weapon. That’s not the only chemical reaction that can occur, but the others aren’t any better, as far as I can tell – like the one that creates hydrazine. That is basically rocket fuel.

So where do the French fries come in? This month, the California Attorney General proposed labelling French Fries and potato chips with a warning that they contain acrylamide, “a chemical created in frying or baking starchy foods that a Swedish study linked to cancer in laboratory rats.” Mmm, no. First off, other studies indicate that the tiny amounts humans consume from their diets is not enough to lead to increased cancer risk. Second, do we really need another really, really stupid warning in our lives? (While they’re at it, if they’re going to label French fries, I think they should label dihydrogen monoxide, too. Dangerous stuff, that.)

So while I was cleaning the floor, trying not to breath (no, I didn’t add any bleach; I didn’t need to for it to smell bad), I thought about the French fries, and I thought about ammonia and bleach cohabitating on the supermarket shelves. I think we can all agree that French fries aren’t exactly the healthiest things to eat. But they weren’t used as a weapon in the First World War.

What?

What’dja say?

Les frites belges vont t’attaquer! Run away!