What Is Your Favorite Comicbook Character and Why?

[Cthulhu]

How to tell where your food is from.
USA: first ingredient on the list is "corn syrup". The list ends with "gluten free". Packaging shows a healthy, fit persona.
Venezuela: there's nothing inside the packaging.
China: analysis of any meat: dog. Analysis of any oil: sewage.
Canada: whatever it is, it's ten times the price it is in other countries.
India: when put in a petri dish to test for bacteria, the food first eats the contents of the petri dish, then the petri dish itself.
Spain/Portugal: the meat content of any canned meat is around 35% meat.
Sweden: hold breath, hold can, pull pin to remove lid, throw into neighbouring backyard that's downwind and take cover. It's Swedish if the neighbors begin to vomit after smelling the contents.
Netherlands: whatever it is, it's made of mashed potatoes and a mashed vegetable. One can choose between kale, sauerkraut, carrot, cabbage, spinach or beets for variation. May contain some pieces of sliced sausage that are mashed into the rest of the mass. Maybe some gravy. Mash thoroughly before eating.
Italy: whatever it is, it's made of durum wheat flour, tomatoes and basil. Maybe cheese.
Japan: open the packaging. If the fish inside is still moving, then it's from Japan.

In Germany: Whatever it is, it gives you varying degrees of heartburn. Especially the bread from the supermarkets, it's literally half-baked, moist and simply awful.

[G. Janssen]

I worked for Dart Container.  The expansion agent they use in Styrofoam is Pentane, which is only one carbon and one hydrogen atom from Benzene -- a known carcinogen.

Keklas, you'll probably going to hate my guts after reading this reply.

So let me begin by saying that your idiotic former employer could've and should've given you all the information you needed or wanted on pentane. There's plenty of research done on it and your employer must've had safety sheets.

Pentane's chemical formula is C5H12. Benzene's is C6H6. One carbon atom and 6 hydrogen atoms difference.
I've worked with both. For years. Benzene is evil. Don't breathe it, don't touch it, don't look at it. It causes cancer and can cause birth defects, even skipping a generation in doing so, just like tetra (tetrachlorotoluene) can.

But I wouldn't worry about pentane too much. Yes, it can be harmful when inhaled (chemical pneumonitis due to fluid in the lungs is its biggest danger). It can depress the nervous system when people are exposed to high doses and kill you when enough of it is ingested. But the doses we're talking about to cause those things are relatively high. Gasoline will cause the same problems.

Pentane is not known to cause cancer. And in this case it's not the number of carbon atoms that is relevant, but the shape of the molecules. Benzene is a ring, while n-pentane is a chain. Many molecules have 6 carbon atoms. One of them is glucose.

But this doesn't mean that one carbon atom difference cannot mean a world of difference: methanol has one carbon atom and causes blindness. Ethanol has two and causes divorces. Propanol has three, can be consumed in larger quantities than methanol and causes drowsiness. Butanol has four and is still safe enough to be used in cosmetics. The trouble starts with pentanol. Hexanol can cause severe burns.

My church, my home, my former employer (I am retired), and many of my former employer's clients have banned Styrofoam from their premises and official functions due to my efforts.

Good. Polystyrene should not touch food. It's great as insulation between 2 walls, but not as containers for coffee.

This is my revenge for having been fired from Dart for "asking too many questions" about the health and safety of their workers and end-users.

My employer would've promoted you to "Departmental Health and Safety Manager" and told you to write a full report on the dangers and required improvements of the working conditions, including a detailed cost analysis and then ask you to defend it in front of a panel of managers when asked to present it. Not joking.

My employer did this to me when I kept complaining about the lack of static discharge prevention in the foundry (my last employer was Philips Semiconductors / NXP). I pulled it off, was happy for about 10 seconds and then heard that I had to ground every shelf, cabinet and surface that came into contact with silicon wafers, install ionizers where needed, check the measures taken every quarter and arrange annual audits from an external source. They made me solely responsible.

F*ckers.

And thus my title went from "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services Engineer" to "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services and Static Discharge Prevention Engineer".

Awesome. But a raise would've been better.

It resulted in our fab becoming the only one on the site to pass all requirements that some customers (like Bosch) had. Other foundries began to notice and it didn't take long before I was given even more work.

[Mithramuse]

{snip}
And thus my title went from "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services Engineer" to "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services and Static Discharge Prevention Engineer".

Awesome. But a raise would've been better.

It resulted in our fab becoming the only one on the site to pass all requirements that some customers (like Bosch) had. Other foundries began to notice and it didn't take long before I was given even more work.

...but did you get a raise at that point?

--Mithramuse

[G. Janssen]

{snip}
And thus my title went from "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services Engineer" to "End-of-Line Measurement Control Services and Static Discharge Prevention Engineer".

Awesome. But a raise would've been better.

It resulted in our fab becoming the only one on the site to pass all requirements that some customers (like Bosch) had. Other foundries began to notice and it didn't take long before I was given even more work.

...but did you get a raise at that point?

--Mithramuse

Alas, no. But I did get an assistent some time after. Working for Philips wasn't bad. Stressful at times, but not boring. Things changed when the semiconductor division was sold and became NXP. The new owners ruined a lot of things.
An example. Philips' registration system allowed people to leave early. I would leave 30 to 45 minutes early when I had done what I could do. Why hang around? To stare at the walls? But if we were called at 3 AM during weekends, we'd come, fix whatever was tool was broken and not declare overtime. And if a machine was still down at the end of the day, we'd stay until it was fixed and not declare overtime.
NXP demanded everyone to be on the site 8 hours and 10 minutes every day. Bye, freedom. You can guess what happened. I think Americans call it 'quiet quitting'.