Urban Legends

I got an appalling and very frightening email the other day. One of my good friends, Kathy, who knows that our family has been trying to use environmentally friendly products in our home, forwarded an email warning that said that the Swiffer Wetjet was killing family pets. Apparently, the poisonous toxins in the chemicals in the cleaning solution was being licked up by unsuspecting dogs and cats and likely babies too, and then later their innards literally were expelled through their rectums. I was horrified by the very graphic mental image of intestines and livers trailing out of the back end of some dying beloved pet... all because their well-meaning family was trying to keep their homes clean and free of germs. Kathy knew that I would appreciate hearing about how dangerous using one of those commercial cleaning products was.

Even though I haven't personally used this product, I could not fathom how a corporation who advertises themselves as a family company could possibly market such a deadly cleaner to unsuspecting consumers, so I went to some of my favourite go-to sites to research this further.  As I suspected, there is absolutely no truth to this "urban legend" and there is nothing toxic at all used in the Swiffer Wetjet.

What annoys me about warnings like this is how quick people are to believe the things that arrive in their email mailbox and it never occurs to them to use some common sense, or even question how much truth there might be in one of these internet rumours. The emails invariably swear that the information is absolutely true and they know because it's been checked out and verified by snopes.com, hoaxslayer.com or truthorfiction.com (websites dedicated to sifting through and sorting between rumour and reality). Recipients of these emails, comforted by the fact that the email SAYS the facts have been checked, dutifully pass them along to everyone on their email contact list. 

These urban legends aren't always warnings... sometimes they are appeals  to help some child with cancer by forwarding the email to everyone on your contact list to raise money for each email sent. Sometimes they are the slanderous propaganda of one political party against another, or one religious group against another. Every email I have ever gotten that urges me to "let everyone I care about know" has proven to be either totally false, or contain a dangerous mixture of fact and fiction. I can’t tell you how many times that someone has added on to the email that the information has been checked through Snopes or one of the other websites. When you check it out yourself, it invariably confirms that the information is UNTRUE, not true.

The internet is a wonderful thing, and there is a wealth of information for anyone who knows how to type in a question into google. I'm not convinced that the Swiffer Wetjet does any better of a job of cleaning my floors than my soap and vinegar, but I am certain that those who choose to use that product are not endangering the lives of their pets and children.

And as for the next informative emails Kathy forwarded to me... after checking them out, turns out that Ed Sullivan and Humphrey Bogart were not brothers after all.  And sadly, I will not be getting a cheque from Microsoft for helping them to test their new forwarding tracking software.