People go crazy at them Chuck E. Cheese restaurants.

In 2007 an outbreak of foodborne illness, leading to 4 hospitalizations, was linked to an employee changing the diaper of a diarrhea-stricken toddler in the kitchen of a Maryland Chuck E. Cheese.

WPSD Local 6 reports that now, two women have pleaded guilty to leaving their kids alone at a Chuck E. Cheese in Paducah, Kentucky while they went shopping.

Marilyn Thomas and Kimberly Cali left a 3-year-old and a 9-year-old at Chuck E. Cheese for an hour and a half while they went shopping.

One of the children was Cali's daughter. The other was her niece. Thomas was the children's grandmother.

They spent four hours in jail for the crime, and owe $200 in fines and $210 each in court costs.
 

Sometimes, for mental floss, I check out the blog, It Was Over When: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends. Today’s post came from Michelle.

I prepared a nice meal for my husband. He was hungry but also had to poop. So, he took his plate into the bathroom and ate it while he was pooping. To this day I cannot eat ham.

— Michelle

Aftermath: Divorce.
 

We often host drum circles out on the large lawn where we beat on large animal hides and get into touch with our inner obscure jazz that NPR helps us find. Or Phish live albums.

Or not.

On December 24, 2009, a woman aged 24 years from New Hampshire was confirmed to have gastrointestinal anthrax on the basis of clinical findings and a Bacillus anthracis blood culture isolate. Her symptoms began on December 5.

One day before symptom onset, she had participated in a drumming event at a community organization's building where animal-hide drums of multiple ages and origins were played. This report describes the case and subsequent investigation, which identified 84 persons potentially exposed to anthrax, including those persons at the drumming event and those who lived or worked at the event site. Review of New Hampshire disease surveillance data and clinical microbiology records for periods before and after the event identified no additional anthrax cases. Initial qualitative environmental testing of the event site yielded three positive samples (two from drum heads and one composite sample of three electrical outlets in the main drumming room). Wider, targeted, semi-quantitative environmental testing of the site and additional drums yielded six positive samples (two from one drum and four from environmental locations in the building).

These results suggested that aerosolization of spores from drumheads had occurred. All isolates obtained from environmental and drum samples matched the patient's isolate by multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis using eight loci (MLVA-8). Public health agencies and persons with exposure to animal-hide drums should be aware of the potential, although remote, risk for anthrax exposure associated with these drums.

A total of 72 persons attended the December 4 event, and a total of 59 drums were present, including 17 drums that participants brought from home. Volunteers set up drums and prepared a vegetarian meal; participants ate dinner in the main drumming room (Figure) before beginning the drumming circle, which lasted 2 hours.

A friend of mine works for a company in charge of collecting waste oil from restaurants to later turn it into fuel. They also pick up road kill from I-70. It’s a dirty job, but I’m glad somebody is doing it.

The Chinese have taken recycling to a whole new level. The waste oil is “skimmed from kitchen waste” and resold in the black market. The yuck factor is enough reason in itself to blog about, but the practice is also a dangerous one:

“Reused cooking oil would likely contain acrylamide, a chemical that forms naturally when starchy foods are baked or fried. Studies have shown the chemical, which also has industrial uses, causes cancer in lab animals and nerve damage to workers who are exposed to high levels.”

Chinese officials say they are stepping up their efforts to combat this and other food safety issues.