Aspirin Give Headaches To Responders

Have you heard about Bayer recently mailing up to 178,000 aspirin samples to homes everywhere? What you may not know is that 35,00 of those samples are of their new "Quick Release Crystals."

Yep, 35,000 samples of white powder in the mail. What was undoubtedly designed as a creative, innocuous promotion will most certainly create headaches for the responder community, including law enforcement, hazmat units, poison control centers, hospital ERs, and the CDC. And, of course, all sorts of alarms will be going off at the Post Office.

This is a fine example of what I call an accidental, human-caused disaster. Consider the costs for all the agencies called to respond to panic-stricken consumers who think they've been exposed to anthrax spores. Not to mention the emotional trauma of those who accidently dump the contents on their kitchen countertop.

Obviously, Bayer didn't think about this side effect.

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