That Kinoki FootPad Ad --

I don't know how many of you have seen the ad for the Kinoki footpad detoxication system but Revere- at Effect Measure viewed the ad and posts how just watching it makes him feel -- well -- perhaps we should hear it in his own words. . . .

[E]very time I see this piece of [. . . .] advert for something called the Kinoki footpad detoxification system. I want to scream when it comes on television. I mean really SCREAM. Mrs. R. has to restrain me from yelling at the TV. This ad pushes all my buttons. It pushes buttons I didn't even know I had. It pushes buttons I don't want to have and no one should have.

Now Wired has noticed it (hat tip Boingboing), calling it The Biggest Medical Scam Since Alex Chiu's Immortality Device. Since I'm not a quackery aficionado I don't know about Alex Chiu's live long and prosper technology, but I am an environmental epidemiologist and I know something about chemical toxins in general and some of them I know quite a lot about, as in being an expert knowing a lot about them. Like asbestos. Asbestiform fibers are minerals, variously composed calcium and magnesium silicates. When you breathe them they can cause a fatal scarring of the lungs (asbestosis) or one of a number of kinds of cancer. Because they are mineral fibers, they don't move around much once they get lodged wherever they get to. In particular, they won't leach out onto a foot pad over night. Nor, unfortunately, will your cellulite. Or lead. Or parasites. Mucous?!?! Holy Mother [. . . . ] (I will grant it is pretty effective at removing that green stuff from your wallet).

In case you have missed this ad, the Effect Measure website provides a helpful video.