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The Discovery Channel now has a precaution about the deadly poisoning prank that is about to be aired on pay TV this week.
On the initial episode of Alaskan Steel Men, a reality show about a group of welders. One of the welders poisons the other welder’s food with an eye drop.
In the show, the guy that got poisoned only suffers from diarrhea, but no serious illness happened to him. However, that is further from the truth since the ingredient in the eye drops called tetrahydrozoline can cause seizures, depressed breathing or an inability to breathe, and coma. It never causes diarrhea.
In response to the millions of concern about the reality show, Fairfax Media, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific now forces the show to insert warning notices before the episode and after every advertisement to let people know how dangerous the group of welders are doing and therefore should not be done at home.
The said notice read: "WARNING: The following show features activities that can be dangerous and should not be imitated. The misapplication of eye drops when ingested may cause serious harm and should not be re-enacted."
The myth about eye drop in food will cause diarrhea already widespread as lots of people have become gravely ill because of the urban myth.
The myth comes from the 2005 film Wedding Crashers, wherein Owen Wilson's character use an eye drop to poison’s another guy’s drink, causing him to suffer from diarrhea.
Because of the movie, people thought that eye drops will just cause other people to suffer from diarrhea and not from any serious and fatal complications. There is a case in Wisconsin, wherein a nursing student got sentenced for 90 days imprisonment for the said prank. Another case was that from a 15-year-old New Jersey boy and got sentenced to 60 days in a juvenile detention centre for pulling the same prank on his classmate.
According to Richard Day, professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of New South Wales, tetrahydrozoline is extremely dangerous when swallowed. Even when taken in small amounts, it will still cause some fatal complication to the one that consume it.
The professor noted that the eye drop doesn’t have the same effect when applied in the eye, but has a different result when taken orally. Some of the complications are drowsiness, blood pressure fall, decreased consciousness and there are far more fatal complications that it can cause.
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