If you're heading out to an Occupation today AND you're a fan of tasty, tasty chili peppers, you'll want to read Deborah Blum's "About Pepper" essay in Scientific American.
The reason pepper-spray ends up on the Scoville chart is that – you probably guessed this – it's literally derived from pepper chemistry, the compounds that make habaneros so much more formidable than the comparatively wimpy bells. Those compounds are called capsaicins and – in fact – pepper spray is more formally called Oleoresin Capsicum or OC Spray.But we've taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.
Until you look it up on the Scoville scale and remember, as toxicologists love to point out, that the dose makes the poison.
(via @chaplinscourage)
- World's hottest pepper plants for sale – Boing Boing
- Growing the Poison Pepper – Boing Boing
- Chili peppers' surprising pain relief – Boing Boing
- Weaponized Chili Peppers – Boing Boing
- Chili pepper science – Boing Boing
- Taste testing the world's hottest pepper – Boing Boing
- Chili peppers burn your butt: Making sense of "duh" discoveries …
- Taste test: Togarashi – Boing Boing
