1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (50 page)

360

FACT :
Lack of clean water and improper disposal of human waste contribute to the spread of numerous preventable diseases,
including typhoid, cholera, and dysentery
, which take the lives of thousands of children each day.
So please stop crapping on playgrounds and in the foam ball cage at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

“Poo Facts,” Poo Productions Advocacy Group,
www.pooproductions.org
.

361

FACT :
Safe disposal of children’s feces can reduce childhood diarrhea by
as much as 40 percent
.
A few years back I took my dogs for a hike. One of them went off the trail to sniff around and started wallowing in something on the ground. When the dog returned, he stank of what I assumed to be deer feces. We hiked on and the trail curved around by the spot where my dog had wallowed, so I glanced over . . . and saw a big pile of used toilet paper. That was not safe disposal of feces.

“Poo Facts,” Poo Productions Advocacy Group,
www.pooproductions.org
.

362

FACT :
The most germ-laden place on your toilet isn’t the seat or even the bowl:
it’s the handle
.
The solution: don’t flush. Let the next guy worry about it.

“The Truth about the Toilet,”
Clorox.com
,
www.clorox.com
.

363

FACT :
Some major world cities remain disturbingly behind the times
when it comes to sanitation
. Milan, Italy, one of the fashion centers of the world, continued to dump raw, dangerous sewage into the Lambro River until the city built its first treatment plant in 2005, spurred by the threat of a $15-million-a-day fine from the European Union.
And you thought Venice smelled bad.

Rose George, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters (St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

364

FACT :
Brussels, Belgium, seat of the European Union,
dumped human waste into the Senne River
until completion of a water treatment plant in 2003.
All those Europeans were a-peein’ directly into the Senne.

Rose George, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters (St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

365

FACT :
When you pee,
a small amount of urine enters your mouth
through the saliva glands.
Which I suppose is better than urine entering your mouth any other way.

Greta Garbage, That’s Disgusting: An Adult Guide to What’s Gross, Tasteless, Rude, Crude, and Lewd (Ten Speed Press, 1999).

366

FACT :
Urine with a sweet odor can indicate that blood sugar is being excreted,
a warning sign for diabetes
. The smell is also caused by starvation and ketonuria, a result of excessive dieting.
I don’t think starving people are too concerned about the smell of their pee.

Sally Wadyka, “What Your Urine is Telling You About Your Health,” MSN Health & Fitness,
www.health.msn.com
.

FACT :
If you see
blood in your urine
, consult a doctor right away. It is most likely the sign of a urinary tract infection, but can also indicate bladder cancer.
Yes, see a doctor right away—after you regain consciousness, that is.

367

Sally Wadyka, “What Your Urine is Telling You About Your Health,” MSN Health & Fitness,
www.health.msn.com
.

368

FACT :
Holding in urine too long
puts you at risk of death from hyponatremia
, also called “water intoxication,” the result of consuming more water than your body can regulate. In 2007, a twenty-eight-year-old woman died of hyponatremia during a “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest sponsored by a local radio station in Sacramento, California.
Well, her New Year’s resolution was to drink more water.

Tom Zeller Jr., “Too High a Price for a Wii,” The Lede— New York Times, January 15, 2007,
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com
.

369