Bottom Line

Michael Levitt, associate chief of staff at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Hospital in Minnesota, says he thinks he has identified the ...well... offending component of flatulence: sulfur. “When we presented [volunteers with] samples with high concentrations of sulfur gas, people told us it didn’t smell very good,” Levitt said. “Then we removed sulfur gases chemically, and the odor disappeared.” Phase II: they fitted test subjects with air-tight Mylar underpants, with a tube that routed any ...um... expelled gasses through a charcoal filter. Other volunteers then sniffed the output, and expressed their ...uh... approval of the underpants’ effectiveness. Still, the filter isn’t ideal. “Sulfur may come from the foods people eat, but we can’t say just which foods people should avoid,” Leavitt concluded. (UPI) ...That’s just like a government researcher: he attacked the problem at the wrong end.