by Andrew Davis
According to Laura Lee’s book, 100 Most Dangerous Things in Everyday Life and What You Can Do About Them, more people die at the paws of teddy bears than grizzly bears. Children who sleep with the cuddly creatures can swallow the button eyes, choke on loose fur, and pick up bacteria that swarm on the stuffed animal in other places (e.g., nursery school).
It’s enough to make someone banish Teddy to a chair.
However, even that chair could pose problems for you. Each year, more than 410,000 Americans have seating-related accidents. Most of those injuries come from falls; too many people lean too far back in that chair and … well, you know. In addition, The Wall Street Journal has reported that most of the lower-back pain in this country is caused by long stretches of chair sitting. Even beanbag chairs can be dangerous; at least five children have died because they unzipped the items, crawled inside, and suffocated.
Here’s a sobering possibility: Eating fruits and vegetables can kill you. Apples, broccoli, mangos, and tomatoes are just some of the foods that have been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. Many health-conscious individuals try to reduce their odds of getting cancer by avoiding foods with ‘chemicals.’ However, according to Lee’s book, there’s no such thing. The only difference between processed and organic foods is that the former have synthetic chemicals and the latter obtain theirs from nature.
Then there are hospitals, where people supposedly go to recover. Deaths from nosocomial (hospital-related) infections actually kill more people each year than car crashes and homicides combined. One out of every 20 people who go into a hospital leaves with an infection he did not have upon arrival. It turns out that the primary culprits are poor ventilation, new medical innovations (that stay in the body longer than ever before), and the lack of hygiene among medical professionals.
Lee touches upon a myriad of other hidden dangers, ranging from cotton swabs to office desks to, yes, underwear. By using anecdotes, she stresses that you can never be too careful.
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