The Popcorn Lung Crisis of ’07

I want you to listen here to the co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America, Chris Cuomo, on the program Good Morning America today. It has to do with something we discussed yesterday.

CUOMO: And that’s the key distinction, having all this inhaled at the workplace as opposed to what can happen in your home and my home. If this is true, that people at home eating popcorn can get popcorn lung, it creates an entirely new level of concern.

RUSH: Now, Chris Coomo is, of course, the son of Mario Coomo. By the way, that’s how the Reverend Jackson pronounces the name, and I don’t want to embarrass the Reverend Jackson, so if he says it’s Coomo, it’s Coomo. Now, Chris Cuomo, the son of Mario Cuomo, also known here as Mario the Pius, his son Andrew Cuomo is the attorney general of the state of New York. Now, they’ve got this thing going that popcorn lung can kill you in your house. It’s based on a phony, fallacious story, and we had the details yesterday, and I want to try to head this off at the pass because the popcorn police are going to be heading out and trying to determine what you can and can’t do in your house. ‘Microwave popcorn fans worried about the potential for lung disease from butter flavoring fumes should know this: The sole reported case in a non-factory worker involves a man who popped the corn every day and inhaled from the bag.’

This is bizarre. ”He really liked microwave popcorn. He made two or three bags every day for 10 years,’ said William Allstetter, a spokesman for National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver where the man’s respiratory illness was diagnosed. ‘He told us he liked the smell of popcorn, so he would open and inhale from freshly popped bags.” He was huffing it, exactly right. So you snort popcorn fumes from three bags a day for ten years, and you might get popcorn lung. This reminds me of the way they banned saccharin in this country once before. They shot up a bunch of rats, a bunch of mice with the equivalent of five years worth of consumption of saccharin. They died of bladder cancer. ‘Ooh, saccharin causes cancer. Get it off the market.’ We eventually had to get it from Canada. It eventually got back on the market, but it destroyed Tab, which deserved to be destroyed because that stuff was horrible. That was the most rotgut diet drink. I remember my mom and dad forcing that — oops, sorry, talking about myself. I’m going to turn over a new leaf, ladies and gentlemen. I’m being too arrogant, too self-absorbed. I’m going to stop talking about myself. Folks, don’t worry about popcorn lung unless you’re out there snorting the fumes from the bag, and you gotta be doing it to a lot of bags.