Sooooo, you should really only be worried if you pop your corn at least 8 hours a day, several hundred bags at a time, right?

Seriously, I'm betting that walking on the sidewalk next to an average street is worse for your lungs than popping a bag of popcorn.

Um, actually, you're not eating it at your own peril at all. The people affected by this are workers making the stuff, not the consumer:

"the butter flavoring in microwave popcorn causes permanent, debilitating asthma-like effects in popcorn factory workers."

Sheesh.

I'm absolutely shocked. Shocked I tell you. I'm going to go throw out my mega box of butter lovers in a minute. First I need a cigarette though.

I eat popcorn almost every day. its great source of fiber and its a whole grain. and its a very cheap snack.
I never eat the microwave stuff. I bought a hot air popper and I use an olive oil mister to make the salt or seasoning stick to it.

I avoid microwave popcorn because it tastes bad, whether or not it's dangerous. Making it in a hot air popper or on the stove is SO much tastier, and also cheaper and generates less waste. You can also put regular kernels in a paper bag in the microwave if you absolutely insist on microwaved popcorn.

Personally, I prefer the taste of air-popped popcorn with real butter. This might have something to do with the fact that no matter what I do the microwave stuff gets burned and smells awful.

@not_seth_brundle: Maybe not. Microwave popcorn tends to be a little different from air-popped due to how microwaves pop the kernels. So that may not work too well.

@Buran: Have you tried it? It works; not perfectly, but it does work. Here is Alton Brown's method:

[www.foodnetwork.com],1977,FOOD_9936_11374,00.html

Popcorn lung is not news.. Sheesh

[en.wikipedia.org]

[www.loe.org]

Good to see it getting press though.

I love misleading headlines. There is NO DANGER to consumers. To workers MAYBE, but since there is not a complete scientific survey it would be irresponsible to report it as such.

@Not_Seth_Bruncle
I love Alton Brown! That's a good recipe too!

@not_seth_brundle: Once or twice, with not-very-good results.

Also, that link got me an "oops!" page.

@NickRB: It's not misleading since all it says is "may cause lung damage". That it does indeed do. It's just that it's a lesson in the fact that pre-forming opinions without knowing all the facts is a bad idea.

Yes, diacetyl only seems to be dangerous in cases of long term high levels of exposure.

The stuff's still plain nasty, though. Real butter does not make your whole house smell rancid for many hours.

Fortunately, extreme laziness and popcorn can still come together, with the "natural" flavoured type, which is just the butter-type without the yellow colouring and diacetyl.

(Which means that what you're paying for is popcorn kernels glued together with a slab of shortening. Bon appetit!)

Sweet, delicious, powdered popcorn butter dust of death.

That sounds like a new Challenge on MXC.

@Buran: The "oops" is because Gawker's link embedder thingy and Food Network's URL formatting don't get along, but search for Plain Brown Popper and you'll get the recipe.

Don't like Orville's, Act II or Pop Weaver. If you want microwave popcorn that tastes good and has real butter flavor, get Cousin Willie's Buttery Explosion! Nothing else compares! Found in Walmart and Kroger that I know of, and I'm sure others. Or order from web site [www.ramseypopcorn.com]

Also, try sprinkling some garlic salt (some like onion salt too) on your butter popcorn. yum yum!

This is old news.

However, one of the microwave popcorn companies actually addressed this in a press release last week.

PopWeaver is going to make butter flavored microwave popcorn without diacetyl.

[www.junkfoodblog.com]

Isn't it safe to assume that ANY fine powder inhailed into your lungs on a daily basis will be BAD?!?!? If you inhaled baby powder every day, it would eventually start doing damage...

I honestly feel bad for anyone who gets afflicted with stuff like this from their job, but when will people learn that companies are NOT looking out for the employees best interests.

I remember hearing about this way back when (probably in 2004), talking about the employees with reduced lung function... So, you'd bet that most of the companies that make the popcorn would know about the potential problems. And did they stop using it... NO.

Nordic Ware makes a perfectly useful microwave corn popper; it's a bowl, with a lid that has standoffs at the corners to allow steam to escape. You can pop your corn with a little oil, or without, and you don't have to deal with "genuine faux butter"! It's also less than $10, so you can fairly quickly make back the money you spent on it by buying cheaper popcorn instead of prepackaged microwave bags.

@ChrisC1234: Anything that goes into your lungs, has to come out again. You could work in a powdered sugar factory, and you would probably have problems.

I'm generally opposed to "uni-taskers" in my kitchen, but I just keep finding reasons to be happy I tracked down a hot-air popper.

@Walters:

It's actually pronounced di-uh-SEET-l. What you have would be diacetal, a different compound. FWIW.

/channeling anal professors

I suggest that we as popcorn buying public do what we can to reward Pop Weaver for treating their employees responsibly. Try to only purchase Weavers, and write-to/encourage your local grocers to drop brands that still use diacetyl.

All aerosol oils are a lung risk.

Jesus Christ, I guess I'll just stop eating and drinking altogether. It's only a matter of time before water is found to cause liver failure...

@Daniel Rutter: I worked in place where people would pop that stuff. Oh, the stench! Had at least two fires, one of which was under the NOC.

@not_seth_brundle: Do HTML-embedded links break too? I've never seen one break when I use regular HTML formatting instead of just pasting only the URL.

Hmm Microwave popcorn, Toner, Lead, Asbestos, Occasional Radon, PCB's, and Transfat, is there anything left in the workplace that won't kill us?

Anyways I was starting to wonder why pop weaver tastes so good.

I was going to agree that your pronunciation key wasn't right since that's not the way it was pronounced in my chemistry courses, but then I found at dictionary.reference.com:
[dahy-uh-SEET-l, -SET-l, dahy-AS-i-tl]

So apparently there's more than one way to pronounce it. I've mostly heard it as the second pronunciation and a couple of times as the last one.