What you don't know, wont hurt you, but this one it sure is worth knowing. I used to work for an envelope company. Our plant supervisor used to work in the Chicago plant and told us not to lick the envelopes because they would often find dead rats at the bottom of the glue barrel (after thousands of envelopes had been glued and shipped).
I work in a factory and we have 2 employees who used to work in an envelope factory. They told me that when the machine jams up, they use whatever water is handy to thin out the glue. This includes water that they just mopped the floor with. Since then, I've avoided licking envelopes!
A woman was working in a post office in California. One day she licked the envelopes and postage stamps instead of using a sponge. That very day the lady cut her tongue on the envelope.
A week later, she noticed an abnormal swelling of her tongue. She went to the doctor, but they found nothing wrong. Her tongue was not sore or anything.
A couple of days later, her tongue started to swell more, and it began to get so sore, that she could not eat. She went back to the hospital, and demanded something be done. The doctor took an x-ray of her tongue and noticed a lump. He prepared her for minor surgery. When the doctor cut her tongue open, a live cockroach crawled out! There were roach eggs on the seal of the envelope. The egg was able to hatch inside of her tongue, because of her saliva. It was warm and moist. This is a true story reported on CNN.
So sorry but that story is about as true as KFC is breeding chickens without feet. In other words it simply is not true.
A roach egg is about 5/16" (8mm) long and about 3/16" (4mm) thick. That's about twice the size of a cooked grain of rice. Kinda hard to hide something that big in the gum of an envelope. Not only that but in a roach egg case there are typically about 20 roaches.
This is an urban legend that has been around for years.
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I work in a factory and we have 2 employees who used to work in an envelope factory. They told me that when the machine jams up, they use whatever water is handy to thin out the glue. This includes water that they just mopped the floor with. Since then, I've avoided licking envelopes!
A woman was working in a post office in California. One day she licked the envelopes and postage stamps instead of using a sponge. That very day the lady cut her tongue on the envelope.
A week later, she noticed an abnormal swelling of her tongue. She went to the doctor, but they found nothing wrong. Her tongue was not sore or anything.
A couple of days later, her tongue started to swell more, and it began to get so sore, that she could not eat. She went back to the hospital, and demanded something be done. The doctor took an x-ray of her tongue and noticed a lump. He prepared her for minor surgery. When the doctor cut her tongue open, a live cockroach crawled out! There were roach eggs on the seal of the envelope. The egg was able to hatch inside of her tongue, because of her saliva. It was warm and moist. This is a true story reported on CNN.