Last Call: Are Food Recalls Becoming More Common?

Romaine lettuce, chopped melons, cereal... is it just us, or have we seen a lot of food contamination news recently? The Chicago Tribune looks into whether this contamination and subsequent recalls are becoming more common. The reporter found that no, it's not that food is somehow more dangerous, it's that food scientists are getting better at detecting contaminants. Also, as America's food producers consolidate, the impact of an outbreak at one plant has wider effects than it might have decades ago. Is that comforting? I'm not sure. [Kate Bernot]

I am a pool person, going all the way back to my days as a lifeguard at the Worth Pool the summer after I graduated from high school (where I got a very nice tan on the top of my thighs and spent my days yelling "Walk!" at children running on wet cement). So I was intrigued and a little horrified by this video, in which the Vat19 folks create a giant bath bomb out of corn starch, baking soda, citric acid, and dye to see if they can turn a whole pool black like a regular bath bomb does with a tub. The whole process is pretty cool to witness, but the former lifeguard in me worries about the people in the pool with the bath bomb, and wonders who's going to clean all that up. [Gwen Ihnat]