Nothing scary to see here.

I was getting caught up on some light blog reading about cancer treatment, chemicals in children’s medicine, and toxic sunscreens when I came across this fun story about McDonald’s voluntary recall of 12 million Shrek-decorated glasses after complaints of cadmium contamination were lodged with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Cadmium is considered more toxic than lead and even low levels have been linked to health problems including kidney damage and fragile bones. One of those complaint-lodgers was thesmartmama.com.    

Here’s how I imagine this story went down: this woman blogger, goes to McDonalds, orders a Shrek glass full of something or she gets the empty Shrek glass as a promotion, (not sure how that works) anyway, she has the Shrek glass. It’s sitting on a tray. When the guy cashier turns around to get some fries she takes a small Bond-style camera pen-like device out of her inside jacket pocket. Or, even better, she takes out a Ghost Busters PKE meter with the arms that stick out and the little red lights  (Did you know there’s a site that contains instructions on how to make all the Ghost Busters equipment at home? Of course you did.) She points the tool, which detects cadmium, at the ink on the outside of the glass and the thing goes crazy. She’s thrown back by the force of the charge (don’t cross the streams!). Someone helps her off the floor, she takes the data to the CPSC, the glasses are recalled and (spoiler alert!) and the marshmallow man is killed in the end.   

Perhaps it didn’t happen quite this way, but this part is the truth: this woman has her OWN Thermo Fisher Scientific Niton XRF analyzer. Total rock star. She tested all of the parts of the glasses herself. The worst offender: yellow lion of Puss in Boots. Like Mr. Stay Puft, I don’t think I’ll ever look at the lion the same way again.