About 40 kids at an Ohio junior high school got sick, and five were sent to the emergency room, after ingesting so-called “ghost chilis” – that is, the Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia pepper, which was at one time the hottest chili pepper in the world.
As The Dayton Daily News reports, a student – whom school officials have identified but who isn’t being named for privacy reasons – brought some of the chili peppers to Milton-Union Middle School on Friday and shared them with his or her peers.
And if you’ve ever eaten a ghost chili, you can probably see where this is going.
To understand why a bunch of kids eating chili peppers is such a big deal, a little bit of background information about the ghost chili is in order. In 2007, according to The Independent, the ghost chili (or Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia) was officially named the hottest chili pepper in the world. Since that time, botanists have created even more-potent chilis, and title of “hottest” is now held by the Carolina Reaper chili. But still, the ghost chili is a big deal.
The “heat” from chili peppers is measured according to the Scoville Scale, named for chemist Wilbur Scoville, who developed it in the early 20th century. On the Scoville Scale, a jalapeño pepper measures about 5,000 Scoville units, whereas a Habañero pepper clocks in at about 300,000. The ghost chili clocks in at a cool million on the Scoville Scale.
And why do they call it the “ghost chili”? Probably because after you eat one, you’ll wish you were dead.
So as you can probably imagine, putting a weaponized foodstuff into the digestive systems of adolescents is not going to end well.
By the time lunch period was over at Milton-Union, 911 had been called and the cops and an ambulance had showed up. Some of the kids had hives, blotchy skin, tearing of the eyes, and “general discomfort.” They were the ones who got off light; others were vomiting and, we’re assuming, begging for death. Five of them were sent to the emergency room.
And if you’re wondering what an emergency room can do for hot-pepper ingestion, the answer is: not much. Unless you’ve having an allergic reaction, in which case you’ll need an epinephrine injection, or an asthma attack, in which case you’ll need respiratory support, about all they can do is tell you to drink milk (NOT water!) and wait it out. Eventually the symptoms will go away on their own.
8th-grader Cody Schmidt, one of the sickened kids and, apparently, a lad of few words, described how he and his peers dealt with the aftermath.
“We all drank like 10 cartons of milk.”
By 2:00 P.M. the school had notified all of the parents of their small-scale biohazard situation.
Superintendent Brad Ritchey was pragmatic about the whole affair.
“The response of emergency services was amazing; deputies and help from surrounding paramedics … we really had a lot of help here this afternoon. This was serious but sometimes situations at schools become far more serious than this.”
Meanwhile, pediatrics nurse Pam Bucaro warns parents to teach their kids to be cautious when a peer offers them food accompanied by the words “Try this!”
“Kids will be kids, and sometimes they do challenges and dare each other to do things. These are not games and there can be serious effects when ingesting things.”
As of this writing, school officials have not yet determined if they are going to pursue disciplinary action against the student who brought the ghost chilis to his middle school.
[Image via Shutterstock/PHILIPIMAGE]
40 Kids At An Ohio School Got Sick After Eating ‘Ghost Chilis’ – One Of The World’s Hottest Chili Peppers is an article from: The Inquisitr News