If we didn't already have enough things to worry about, what about tucking into your favorite snack at the cinema, consuming a deadly type of toxin, and eventually dying after being left in agony? We're always told to watch what we eat, but more than getting your five-a-day, we're now being told to watch out for a deadly substance that can be found in canned foods.
In 2017, a rare outbreak of botulinum toxin killed one man and hospitalized nine due to some poisoned nacho cheese.
The Infographic Show goes through the deadliest substance on Earth, highlighting the deadly pufferfish delicacy (remember the episode from The Simpsons?), cyanide that supposedly killed Adolf Hitler, and ricin that once found its way into Barack Obama's mail.
Advert
The second most deadly substance is batrachotoxin, which is carried by the Golden Poison Frog as the most poisonous animal on the planet. Still, that's nothing compared to botulinum toxin. Although this is used in botox to make us look younger, it's 40 million times stronger than cyanide and can kill a human with just an 80-nanogram dose. As botulinum toxin is odorless and almost impossible to detect, it's a deadly assassin waiting in some canned foods.
Signs involve facial paralysis and a change in speech, so if you experience symptoms like this, you're told to immediately drive to the hospital.
The tragic case of the nacho cheese started when there were reports of people getting sick after ingesting the sauce that was bought from a gas station. The outbreak of clostridium botulinum was linked to four batches of the tainted cheese. After claiming the northern California man, a woman died a few weeks later after she'd been released from hospital and had seemingly recovered. Botulinum toxin is usually found in home-canned food, although it can slip through into some retail products ranging from carrot juice to chili pepper sauce.
We're advised to store canned food at 50 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, use within a year after canning, and boil foods that are low in acid (asparagus, beets, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, seafood, and meat) for 10 minutes before use. You should avoid cans that are swollen, cracked, or expel liquid when opened.
Before you get too worried that you’re about to drop dead from the world's deadliest substance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that only about 20 cases a year are linked to food poisoning.
Still, given that it takes just 0.0000001 grams of botulinum toxin to kill a person, eight grams of the stuff would be enough to wipe out the entire population of Earth.
While we all know that person who's a stickler for use by dates and that other person who will use the sniff test to push something a little further, botulinum toxin isn't something to mess around with.