Effects of Eating Bags of Microwave Popcorn for Years

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Effects of Eating Bags of Microwave Popcorn for Years

Eating bags of microwave popcorn for years is claimed to cause popcorn lung from inhalation of the flavoring used on the popcorn. Plaintiffs with the medical problem sued the popcorn makers and the maker of the flavoring. The flavoring maker asserted it was not liable under the bulk-supplier defense.

Daughetee v. Chr. Hansen, Inc., 960 F.Supp.2d 849, N.D. Iowa (2013)

This is a particularly interesting case that was entertained by the District Court for the Northern District of Iowa in 2013. According to PlainSite (2017), a woman named Deborah Daughetee had been consuming several microwave popcorn bags every day for about five years. Over the course of this time, the woman would eat more than ten different buttered popcorn brands. Each time after a bag of popcorn would be ready, Daughetee extracted it from the microwave, opened the bag and drew the smell of freshly-made popcorn into her lungs. Popcorns oily smell and buttery taste are produced by diacetyl, a chemical often added as a flavoring to various foods. As per PlainSite (2017), among the corporations producing diacetyl-containing flavoring are Chr. Hansen, Inc., Firmenich, Inc., and Symrise, Inc. These corporations are defendants; they would sell their flavoring to manufacturers of microwave popcorn that, in their turn, produce popcorn under the brands that Daughetee would choose to buy.

As has been stated above, Daughetee liked to open the bag and smell freshly-made popcorn; upon that, diacetyl vapors would be released. PlainSite (2017) reports that several studies conducted on the subject showed that prolonged exposure to these vapors could lead to lung diseases. After that, numerous popcorn manufacturers took several precautionary measures in factories to protect workers from excessive exposure to flavorings vapors. However, no changes were made in terms of the packaging of popcorn products. Daughetee sued the defendants, stating that, as a result of smelling the popcorn containing flavorings made by them, she had developed popcorn lung a respiratory injury characterized by coughing and feeling short of breath.

The defendants responded by asserting that the claim was not liable, referring to the so-called bulk-supplier doctrine. According to Meiners et al., as per this doctrine, when a product is sold in bulk by a supplier to an intermediary, the supplier can fulfill its obligation to inform end-users by providing appropriate instructions (2017, p. 163). However, in the doctrine, there is the exception that acknowledges the difficulty of alerting end consumers to possible dangers if a manufacturer delivers a product without its own packaging on which to position warnings. All the defendants of this case supplied their products in their own packages; therefore, the exception cannot be applied here.

References

Meiners, R. E., Ringleb, A. H., Edwards, F. L., (2017). The legal environment of business (13^th ed.). Cengage Learning.

PlainSite. (2017). Daughetee et al. v. CHR Hansen, Inc. et al. Web.

Eating Bags of Microwave Popcorn for Years Cause Popcorn Lung: Response.

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