Oscar Night is a few weeks away, but when you settle in to watch the show with your bowl of popcorn, please be aware that inhaling deeply from the fumes of a freshly-opened bag of microwave popcorn is not the greatest decision you can make from a health standpoint. (Then again, you probably ought to reconsider eating microwave popcorn in the first place, but let’s leave that aside.) A disease informally known as popcorn lung afflicts people who work in popcorn factories and has been known since 2002. But in 2007, doctor diagnosed the first case of popcorn lung in an end-user. The risk is not from eating the popcorn but from breathing it. “This patient described enjoying the smell so much he was actually inhaling the steam.” The best part of the article was when the patient was asked, “Are you around a lot of popcorn?” The response: “I am popcorn.”

Update: Oscar Night is not actually this weekend. That’s what happens when you schedule your blog entries over a year in advance and have to guess when Oscar Night is coming.