Last February, world print news rocked with the news that the government in Malawi was going to make farting in public illegal. Headlines screamed. Speculation ran riot. Malawi’s Local Courts Bill practically went viral. The law passed.
Justice minister George Chaponda, a lawyer, insisted the Local Courts Bill made farting in public a criminal offense. Yet, as reported by Joseph Banda in the Nyasa Times, solicitor general Anthony Kamanga insisted Chaponda missed the point. As Banda reports, “Kamanga said fouling the air did not mean farting but [addressed] issues like burning tires or rubbish in the neighbourhood.”
Another (unnamed) government official “described Chaponda as empty-headed who opens his mouth before digesting what to say.” Later Chaponda insisted he was misquoted. But ha, ha, justice minister—your statement was recorded.
P.S. If it’s at all unclear, the Local Courts Bill does not make farting in public a criminal offense.
Any of you familiar with conditions in Malawi may be thinking, “Don’t they have bigger problems to contend with than arguing over ‘fouling the air’? Like, Madonna? Or the stop-smoking campaigns—even in Japan and China—when tobacco accounts for 70 percent of their export revenue!? And lord bring mercy, their HIV/AIDS rates?”
True, the HIV/AIDS rate is estimated to be 11.90 percent of the adult population. (By comparison, the U.S. and Oregon share a rate of 00.60 percent. Lowest HIV/AIDS may be Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia at 00.01 percent, though that reflects a 2001 estimate; highest probably goes to Botswana with 23.90 percent.)
“So what’s this to do with Oregon and longevity?! Malawi’s over 9800 miles away!”
News from Hoboken, Ore., via the Melting Clock Times reported in January that three were killed by a “hellacious fart” at a Mexican restaurant. The farter was an impressively obese person; the three dead people were seated at nearby tables. Cause of death: suffocation. Others at the restaurant received CPR.
Of course, this is from the news source that also gives us “Vampire Tree Terrorizing Town” (Hoboken, Ore., again) and whose masthead reads “We Invented The Term ‘Slapstick Surrealism’.”
In other farting news, two seventh-graders riding a school bus in May were kicked off after “alleged flatulence.” This is true. Both boys were suspended for one day from Canal Winchester Middle School in Ohio. The allegation was made by the bus driver and school officials deemed their flatulent behavior to be an “obscene gesture.” As one can imagine, this all created quite a hullabaloo for Canal Winchester, Ohio. Recently they even had to change their Web site.
Yet, according to our NIH, 14-23 farts per day can be considered normal. In an expansive article, the NIH goes on to say, “The unpleasant odor of flatulence, the gas that passes through the rectum, comes from bacteria in the large intestine that release small amounts of gases containing sulfur.” Its causes are usually due to normal breakdown of certain foods (sugar, starches and fiber) and to swallowing air while eating, drinking, chewing gum, smoking or wearing loose dentures. People vary widely in their responses to foods and about 1/3 of us, like cows, produce methane gases which eventually “exit through the rectum.” To determine if one is a methane-producer, check whether one’s stools float consistently. If so, it’s likely.
P.S. Rice doesn’t cause gas.
Yet it’s not just flatulence getting city governments going. In January, 2003, it was reported by Forces International that the city of Bend, Ore., passed a ban on “anyone emanating a grossly repulsive odour” riding the city buses. Forces questions such action.
More importantly (?), KGW polled visitors about the Portland, Ore., City Council’s anti-scent action taken in February, 2011. Final results, with almost 3000 people casting votes, are that 77 percent of the people believed this to be a “waste of time” for Council business. If unfamiliar with this Council action, it limits fragrances worn in the city’s workplaces IF they are a bother to anyone in the vicinity. It’s not a “law;” the Council passed it as an “advisement.” So far, 911 centers are “scent-free” and probably some others.
Research has suggested some smells are bothersome to people with asthma. According to Claudia Miller, in an article appearing in Environmental Health Perspectives (December 1998), 15-30 percent of the general population report some sensitivity to chemicals, including fragrances.
However, in another highly debated article from the same journal, polycyclic musks definitely come across as synthetic fragrances to watch, from a distance. They’re used in lots of consumer products. They’re even showing up in human breast milk. Keri Hornbuckle, professor of environmental engineering, University of Iowa, has noted “there are more fragrances in consumer products and at higher concentrations than ever before.”
Hornbuckle has also made many aware that polycyclic musks “reduce the growth of the juvenile and larval stages of the freshwater mussel Lampsilis cardium, a sentinel for vulnerable aquatic species.”
Which brings us to the plight of insect pollinators. In a Forum article (Environmental Health Perspectives, August 2008, Vol. 116, Number 8) by Carol Potera, we learn about some hazards to pollination by insects due to polluted air making floral scents harder for them to trace. An interesting statistic is that “floral scents traveled four times farther in the 1840s.” Now they mix with pollutants and confuse things.
The silver lining (?), pointed out by Jay Evans, research entomologist at the USDA, may be “If insects can’t smell plants, they can’t come to eat them.”
For human longevity purposes, one decidedly wants to smell everything. Our sense of smell identifies whether food is good or even if it’s spicy. Our sense of smell runs an entire spectrum from identifying comfort to danger, such as the smell of smoke (There’s fire!) or the element necessarily added to odorless natural gas. It functions in newborns and throughout one’s life, fading some with age or medical condition. Yet its loss is comparable to any sense loss—life loses a bit of its orchestral beauty and more attention is needed to saunter safely through one’s day.
We’re not done: coming up sometime, Longevity looks at aromatherapy.
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