Re: Painful eye chemicals.

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Simon writes:

> What? No votes for battery acid?

Only because I decided to read a weekend's worth of unread Digests
before responding. :-)

Yep -- been there, done that.  In my case it was just a grain of
dried-up crud from the top of a battery core that I'd taken in to a
Sears auto repair center to trade in on a new Die-Hard for my wife's
car.  Unthinking, I brushed an itchy something or other out of my eye
with what I thought was a clean part of my hand and almost immediately
began shouting for an eye wash.

Fortunately this *was* the auto shop, not the hosiery-bedding-knick
knack department somewhere inside the typical Sears store; they ushered
me immediately to the OSHA-required eye wash fountain and had me stick
my face in it for about five minutes.  

Yes, of all the stupid eye tricks I've done and/or had done to me, that
hurt the worst.  And even if it's not chemicals, there are mechanical
things that can hurt your eyes while working on cars, so as I say, I'm
now pretty anal about eye protection, and I recommend it highly.
  
> A splash of Habanero salsa in the eye will keep you hopping
> for hours.

I once ate an entire habanero chile in one protracted bite -- put it
between my teeth, popped the stem like pulling the pin on a hand
grenade, and started chewing.  It is a much better thing to read about
than to experience. :-)

I did a tremendous amount of study on chiles several years ago when we
had an experimental garden; we grew 31 cultivars (21 hot, 10 sweet)
representing all five economically significant species of the genus
capsicum (chile peppers, or chillies for our U.K. readers).  

Some numbers: the Scoville scale was developed by a research chemist
(working on Ben-Gay, as a matter of fact) to determine a "hotness"
rating for chiles.  It corresponds to the dilution in water at which an
average taster can still detect spiciness.  The jalapeno chile, popular
addition to Mexican cuisine, has a typical Scoville rating of about
2,000 -- meaning that 1 liter of pureed jalapenos, diluted in 2,000
liters of water, will still register as hot to the average taster.

The habanero has a Scoville rating of 350,000.  

If you chop fresh habanero chiles and rub your eyes, you will be in
serious pain for several minutes, even after getting eye wash to
irrigate the area.  The only consolation is the knowledge that capsaicin
(the name of the compound that causes pain, five separate forms of a
vanillyl amide for those of you playing along at home) causes no
physical damage, unlike all the genuinely dangerous compounds that Simon
mentions.  Capsaicin floods nerve endings with calcium ions, which cause
them to send exactly the same signal to the brain that they would if
they had just been set on fire.  The problem is that even after washing
it off, capsaicin continues to send this alarm to the brain for
approximately six minutes.  In other words, all those home remedies
(milk, beer, ice cream, you name it) for quenching the fire of a hot
salsa are eventually ineffective; cold will help because it slows down
the chemical reaction in the nerves, but it can actually make it last
longer.  The exception is that fatty compounds *do* tend to interfere
with the initial effect of nerve penetration, so if you want to tone
down a super-hot salsa, try it with sour cream.  But don't expect eating
sour cream *later* to have much effect.

It is also worth noting that touching any *other* mucous membranes
(either your own or, if you're fortunate enough, those of someone else)
with the same hand you used to chop habaneros will result in the same
hot-coals sensation there as in the eye.  (Tip: household bleach,
diluted about 50% in water, will remove most of the capsaicin from your
fingers if you've been chopping peppers all afternoon for salsa.)

Why do we eat these things?  The same summer that I stripped the paint
off my GT Junior, I happened to be stung by a yellowjacket, the first
such sting in my life; I remarked somewhat curiously that it felt about
the same as getting a fleck of Jasco paint stripper on my skin, and
actually caused less pain than eating a whole serrano chile (a
delicious, fairly small hot chile, Scoville 20k or so) -- which prompted
the unsettling realization that I do things for pleasure that hurt worse
than getting stung by hornets.  What's up with that?

The habanero has a particularly entrancing aroma and flavor, a rich and
heady mix of freesia blossoms, mangoes, and ripe melons, and has an
almost magical ability to transform a dish from mild to magnificent. 
Also, chile peppers cause the brain to release endorphins, the body's
natural opiates, so there is a pleasurable "glow" associated with the
burning sensation they cause.  While not addictive (I can go back to
white bread and Cream Of Wheat any time I want to, but who wants to?),
the body does build up a tolerance to them.  More than anything else,
chile peppers provide an intensity of experience and a sheer sense of
alive-ness that I find exhilarating in its own right.

And of course, anyone who can't understand suffering a bit for something
really extraordinary is probably not meant to own an Alfa for very long.
:-)

 -- Scott Fisher
    Sunnyvale, California (very good pepper-growing country)

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