City of Seattle may ban microwave popcorn

[dogday]

SEATTLE – At Seattle City Hall there are rules.

No weapons, no animals, no loitering, no alcohol, no lying down, no smoking, no music, no fighting, no trespassing.

Could the next thing be no microwave popcorn?

"It can be a significant problem in the future," says Seattle Facilities Director Pedro Vasquez.






http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_061307WABmicrowavepopcornbanTP.43bf29d9.html

[gatorboy]

1. Mmmmm Smells Like Teen Butter!

[puffthemagicdragon]

2. ban all microwave use

aside from the productivity issue microwaves should just not exist in the first place. It is not good for us to constantly be radiated things in our homes...it puts carbon in the atmosphere as well. We finally let go of our microwave and have learned to live without it. eat fresh!

[shenmue]

6. Sure, that's rational

:eyes:

:sarcasm:

[EST]

7. Hmm-

Kinda hard on your teeth, popcorn is, until it's popped.

[aquart]

8. Air popper. Fabulous.

[StarryNite]

17. Where do you get one that doesn't

spit the popcorn all over the floor? I had one years ago, I think it was a Sunbeam and it worked great until it finally quit on me. The one I have now spits seeds and popped corn all over the place.

[aquart]

19. Black n' Decker Handy Pop and Serve.

[StarryNite]

22. Thank you!

I will be searching for one of those. The one I have now is a Toastmaster.

[global1]

20. Put The Top On........nt

[StarryNite]

23. Silly...

:silly: :rofl:

[AndyTiedye]

18. Any Other Way of Cooking Will Burn More Carbon, Except Solar Cooking

Solar cookers are great, but they are also slow, and only work if the sun is shining.

> Eat Fresh

and raw?

[slackmaster]

26. I doubt that running a microwave oven has a smaller carbon footprint than cooking over natural gas

That electricity has to be generated somehow. Transmission and the oven itself are far less than 100% efficient.

[Crandor]

21. How, exactly, is a microwave's radiation going to hurt you?

Certainly not by heating, hardly any of it can get through the door. And if you think microwave radiation (less than 1 meV of energy) is going to damage your DNA with ionization, you must be utterly terrified of visible light (1.7-3 eV).

And this business about it putting "carbon in the atmosphere" - how does that work? Does your microwave run on gasoline or what?

[napi21]

3. I heard this this AM on CNN. It seems lots of people are

putting that little envelope in the MW and walking away, thus letting it burn. There have been MANY calls made to fire departments because of this problem. All I heard this morning was that anyone working in a gov't building better stand by the MW whole popping corn OR ELSE!. They didn't really say what the or else would be.

Do they only hire Shrub's buddies to work in Gov't buildings in Seattle? I honestly can't believe this is that big of a problem!!!!

[Kagemusha]

13. Makes me wonder if they've heard of timers.

I never used any popping corn until very recently. (And it's not exactly nutritious so I'm not going to get far into it anyway..) But not only did I never leave it unattended, I used sane settings and my perfectly working microwave timer did its job well. So I don't get it.

[mondo joe]

15. I assure you, Seattle city workers are not "Shrib's buddies".

Seattle is one of the more liberal cities you'll find in the country, and I don't think I've ever talked with a city worker who indicated otherwise.

[napi21]

25. Sorry, it's just that the only people I can think of who are dumb enough

to CONSTANTLY burn MW popcorn have been Shrubbies! I didn't mean to insult anybody.

All the MW's I've used in the past 20 years have had a "popcorn setting", so what is the BIG problem?????

[karlrschneider]

29. I usually let mine burn a little bit (not to flaming of course)

it tastes better! :D
:popcorn:

[MADem]

4. What a shitty "Hooked ya, Sucker!" headline from the folks at King5 TV!!!!

You read the headline and think you can't eat micro-popcorn if you LIVE in Seattle, but in actual fact, they just want to ban it from city offices!!

The biggest offenders are at the Justice Center, but overheated popcorn has also forced evacuations at the Municipal Tower.

Popcorn is not the easiest thing to cook. Who knows if it's really two, two-and-a-half or three minutes? An unsupervised bag can destroy productivity for all your co-workers....

[Quantess]

5. "top news story of the day" at King5

:eyes:

[dogday]

9. Popcorn Alarms Burn Seattle Officials

SEATTLE -- If you have to pop, know when to stop, Seattle city workers have been warned.

"We continue to see a high number of instances of employees burning microwave popcorn and triggering the building smoke alarms," the city's Fleets and Facilities Department said in a memo to employees in the city government's three downtown buildings.

"This is a serious issue which requires Fire Department emergency response, building evacuation and resetting of building systems."

City Hall and the Seattle Municipal Tower have both had popcorn-related evacuations. Last month, the 11-story Justice Center was evacuated because of burned popcorn _ for the eighth time in three years.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061402496.html

[IChing]

10. Microwave buttered popcorn kills the folks that manufacture it.

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2004/Microwave-Popcorn-Toxic28feb04.htm
http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=11657
http://www.injuryboard.com/view.cfm/Topic=199
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18338470/

[mondo joe]

11. Misleading headline.

The city banning popcorn is not the issue. Microwave popcorn in city buildings is, based on the number of evacuations that have taken place in the last few years is the issue.

I'm not saying I support it -- but we ought to be accurate.

[slackmaster]

27. Correct, and maybe the city should try hiring more intelligent people

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to follow the directions on the package.

[Kagemusha]

12. Just FYI for skimmers: this concerns city employees ONLY

Not in people's homes.

[NoodleBoy]

14. good-- I used to work in an office where, once every 3 weeks, some idiot would burn popcorn

and not the, it was in for 15 seconds too long variety, I mean microwaved by several minutes too many, to the point where the popcorn and the bag it was in would turn black, and the entire office would smell like burned popcorn for a week.

[LisaM]

16. Triggering fire alarms can be expensive - and a nuisance

I worked at a company once where the boss simply couldn't stand the smell of microwaved popcorn (people do tend to burn it). So, he got us a popcorn machine! We had fresh-popped REAL popcorn in bags available all day long - for free. They also had a machine next to it with free pop, lemonade, and iced tea.

Where I work now, people are always burning toast. The smell of burned food really is offensive to some (me included).

[Madspirit]

24. Terrible

<g> I worked at a job once where they wouldn't let us make microwave popcorn. Their reason was that it's smell permeates and then everyone wants to go take a break...and I guess, eat popcorn. The smell does attract.

..but evacuations because people cannot figure out when it's through popping and they burn it... I just don't know...<g> I LOVE popcorn.
Lee

[libodem]

28. I see it as a real nuisance

You can't use the elevators in a fire drill and so every one has to pile down the stairs. Evacuations are a PIA! Wheel chairs especially. It's an accident waiting to happen. Or accidents. Plus if the alarms go off all the time, people become complacent about rushing out of the building. What happens when a mild earthquake breaks the gasline and causes a spark (for instance)? Every second counts. The popcorn machine is brilliant. Bringing out every fire truck, ambulance, police car and ADT, for a popcorn incident, pulls them away from possibly responding to a real emergency. If you got caught calling 911 for a prank it wouldn't be so funny to face the music. Responding to burnt popcorn makes about as much sense. That stuff has a flash point that goes from a pop every 3 seconds to thick, heavy, BLACK smoke engulfing the breakroom and stinking it up for days. It sounds trite but I think the lost time from productivity and the danger of a trampling of employees going en-mass down the stairs are preventable outcomes. I sue if I'd got stomped.