Stir with Caution

What went into cheery glasses all over the country last week was a good deal less lethal than some of the swizzle sticks used to stir it. So warned the U.S. Public Health Service, which acted after a recent party at Sylvan Hills High School in suburban Atlanta. As favors, the students received swizzle sticks topped by a little head fashioned like a Haitian voodoo figure. Within an hour, about 50 of the partygoers broke out in a rash, much like ivy poisoning. It could have been worse, reported the U.S. Occupational Health laboratory in Cincinnati.

The swizzle doll-heads are made of cashew shells, roughly carved to indicate human features. The cashew shells contain cardol, a notorious source of severe allergic reactions among tropic travelers (TIME, May 13, 1957). Even worse, the heads of the sticks are fitted with eyes that appear to be jequirity beans, are deadly poisonous. The Cincinnati testers fed one of the eyes to a rat, which promptly died. The U.S. PHS warned that if a small child eats one of the beans, serious and perhaps fatal illness may follow.

In recent years thousands of the swizzle sticks have come into the U.S. from Haiti. The Chicago board of health last week estimated that some 10,000 sticks have been shipped into its area alone (luckily, no deaths have yet resulted). The board fanned out its entire force of inspectors, confiscated 6,290 sticks from Chicago novelty shops and taverns. It picked up more from recent visitors to Haiti, including 60 from an accountant who spent all week phoning friends to get back the 40 other sticks he gave away as presents. The Haitian Public Health Service also confiscated voodoo swizzle sticks at the source, but nobody knows how many are still hexing U.S. drinkers.

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