How much pee in the pool is fatal?

You may have known that pee combined with chlorine makes a toxic byproduct. So peeing in a chlorine pool actually is unhealthy. But how unhealthy? Like, could it kills you?

The good scientists at arstechnica tried to figure that out. Here’s what they calculated:

Via.

If you and three million other people could get at this pool and unload your pee into it before your bodies melted, before the crowd crushed you to death, and before you drowned from the massive tidal wave of pee... yes, you could feasibly die of cyanogen chloride poisoning originating from chlorinated water and pee. 

Wow. I'm only swimming in lakes and oceans from now on. Oh wait, fish pee... darn it!

"Hey look, that plant has…EYES?!”

I have a suggestion: Don’t ever get close to any plant called the Baneberry. ("Bane" means a cause of great trouble.) And if the plant's other nickname is “Dolls’ eyes”, the same rule applies.

From here.

But just because this plant (known as Actaea pachypoda) looks like a nightmare, is it really so bad? Hey, maybe those dolls’ eyes are tasty. They could be like yogurt-covered eyeballs!

Let’s see, its Wikipedia page says, “Ingestion of the berries can lead to cardiac arrest and death.”

Never mind.

Hey! That CAN'T be right!

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a press release yesterday titled "If the Water Looks and Smells Bad, It May Be Toxic."

What a rip-off! What am I supposed to drink now?

Lethal Wallpaper

At first, this 1947 ad confused me. “How could wallpaper kill bugs?” I wondered. Then I read the ad and saw that the wallpaper is dipped in DDT.

Gross!

DDT (“dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane”) came out in the 1940s. It was used to kill bugs, but like other poisons, DDT didn’t disappear when the bug died. Instead it stayed in the food chain and poisoned other animals… and people!

It’s now illegal to use DDT in countries with responsible governments. But this ad still gives me the chills!

This Brain Will Kill You

This fungi looks like a brain! That’s why it’s known as the “brain mushroom” (aka, Gyromitra esculenta).

But don’t ever eat any mushroom that looks like this… because the brain mushroom is really poisonous. Just like human brains!

Okay okay, human brains aren’t poisonous. But I still think I should discourage you from eating them!

Picture from Scientific American.