The Itch from the New Yorker:
One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm,
she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish
liquid.”… She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way
into her brain.
Heated diacetyl becomes a vapor and, when inhaled over a
long period of time, seems to lead the small airways in the lungs to become
swollen and scarred. Sufferers can breathe in deeply, but they have difficulty
exhaling. The severe form of the disease is called bronchiolitis obliterans or
“popcorn workers’ lung,” which can be fatal…. The man told Dr. Rose that he had
eaten microwave popcorn at least twice a day for more than 10 years.
“When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he
would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” Dr. Rose said.
“That’s heated diacetyl, which we know from the workers’ studies is the highest
risk.”
On Nov. 28, Dr. DeVries’s boss, Dr. Ruth Lynfield, the state
epidemiologist, toured the plant. She and the owner, Kelly Wadding, paid
special attention to the head table. Dr. Lynfield became transfixed by one
procedure in particular, called “blowing brains.”
As each head reached the end of the table, a worker would
insert a metal hose into the foramen magnum, the opening that the spinal cord
passes through. High-pressure blasts of compressed air then turned the brain
into a slurry that squirted out through the same hole in the skull, often
spraying brain tissue around and splattering the hose operator in the process….
“You could see aerosolization of brain tissue,” Dr. Lynfield said… As a result,
Dr. Lynfield said the investigators had begun leaning toward a seemingly
bizarre theory: that exposure to the hog brain itself might have touched off an
intense reaction by the immune system, something akin to a giant,
out-of-control allergic reaction.
