3

Microwave Ovens

The whole idea of cooking food via some kind of invisible death ray has always made people a bit nervous, so rumors of health risks have circulated since the microwave oven was invented. There are two main rumors, the first one has to do with stray radiation giving you cancer, but the second and more recent has to do with carcinogens (cancer-causers) that are somehow created in food when heated by microwaves.

It all started in the late 1980s, when a scientist named Hans Hertel locked himself and seven of his vegetarian buddies in a hotel, eating little more than microwave-prepared vegetables and milk for two whole months (we argue by that point, their farts alone would be cancerous).

Hertel popped out after the two months and stated his findings: "[The men's blood] appears to indicate the initial stage of a pathological process such as occurs at the start of a cancerous condition." Since then, numerous studies have been done on the effects of microwave heating as well as the radiation given off every time you reheat your P.F. Chang's.

"Who wants pot roastOH MY GOD, MY OVARIES ARE BURNING!"

Hans Hertel dropped out of the public view shortly thereafter, but what he said scared the shit out of the public. After all, most people had been using a microwave for years. However, if you carefully examine his statement above, he never offers any evidence that food prepared in a microwave will cause cancer, just that it kind of looks like there might be some kind of cancer shindig about to go down, maybe.

2

Power Lines, Computer Monitors... Pretty Much Anything With Electricity

The whole "power lines give you cancer" scare can probably be traced back to 1979, when two researchers named Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper did a study that showed that there was a link between child leukemia and the close proximity of power lines in some Denver neighborhoods. The cause for this, they said, were the electro-magnetic fields given off from the lines... the same electro-magnetic fields that are given off by TV and computer monitors, microwaves, and half of the stuff around your house.

I will fucking murder you with cancer.

Naturally, this generated a whole shit-storm of other studies on electrical currents and whether or not they were really safe to use. Ironically, these studies were more than likely analyzed using at least once electronic device, so cancer had an inside man like Matt Damon in The Departed.

There were quite a few things wrong with Nancy and Ed's Denver study, first and foremost being that they never actually measured the magnetic fields from the power lines (sort of like that time in 11th grade when you wrote a paper on The Scarlet Letter without ever reading the book). To date, any study that measured the fields has shown no consistent relationship between how powerful the fields were and much cancer people got.

Tesla Bowie would be pissed.

Secondly, they didn't consider the fact that those who live close to power lines are generally low-income families who can't always afford proper health care or a place to live where their children aren't constantly loomed over by the threat of electric death. In fact, there are studies that single out poverty-stricken individuals as having a higher risk of cancer than anyone, because their lives aren't shitty enough already.

1

Fluoridated Water

Let's face it: any time you start putting shit in people's water supply, they're going to complain. You could put forward a program to dribble in a little Cristal at the water treatment plant just to class things up, and you'd get protestors the next day.

So for the past century, many people have been convinced that the plan to dilute fluoride into water supplies is evil somehow, everything from granting the government mind control powers to disposing of toxic waste. Every time a country talks about adding fluoride to its water, alarmists bombard the public with propaganda against it.

Knowing is half the planet -- or whatever. Ah fuck it.

So in 1990, when the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) did a study on the effects of fluoridated water on laboratory rats (evidently rats were responsible for some grievous atrocity back on the planet Scientistune and revenge is being exacted in our world) and found that there was evidence of a higher rate of bone cancer, it loosened the bowels of everyone in the anti-fluoride movement.

The whispers of conspiracy intensified when it was alleged that a scientist working for Colgate had possibly tampered with the results of a major study in 2006 that demonstrated a link between fluoridated water and the appearance of bone cancer in boys, which is way more nefarious than any of us ever expected toothpaste to be.

His eyes are closed because he's dead.

More than 50 different studies have attempted to prove a link between fluoridated water and cancer since that 1990 study, and found what all of the studies prior to that also found, which is that there's no evidence of a link between fluoridated water and cancer.

Like the power line thing, what makes it difficult is that there are infinite other possible causes for cancer so rates go up and down on their own. You may find one community where rates went up, only to find that they were also, say, drinking coolant spilled from nuclear submarines. But as a whole they could find no increase in cancer in communities that have fluoridated water verses the ones that don't.

Basically, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, United States Public Health Service, National Research Council, National Health Service, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all agreed there that fluoride in your tap water won't give you cancer. Then again, if you believe in the conspiracy, those are exactly the type of people the conspirators would hire to reassure you.

So they can control your mind.

With cancer.