MARK MY WORD: BAD BREATH STARING US IN THE FACE

Forget about dioxin and PCBs. The EPA has missed the boat.

The nation's most serious pollution problem is staring us right in the face.

It's halitosis. That's a fancy word for bad breath, one of those odious facts of life that strikes more than 80 percent of the world's adult population.

Just think, millions of people are walking around with the equivalent of a Love Canal in their mouth in violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Researchers at the Laboratory of Oral Microbiology in Israel have spent a lot of time studying bad breath, which I am sure makes them about as popular on the Tel-Aviv campus as Saddam Hussein.

These bad-breath scientists say the problem is so bad that it has caused people to contemplate suicide, seek divorce or lead a life of social isolation as an ambassador to Haiti.

Taping spearmint gum commercials also is a warning sign.

"With some people, you can't ever find the cause. Bad breath isn't 100 percent understood," one ear, nose and throat specialist recently told The Associated Press.

No doubt, it's difficult to find scientists who are willing to spend their days crammed into a lab with a bunch of foul-smelling mouths.

Of course these intrepid researchers could resort to the time-honored practice of the world's top lab guys, which can be summed up in two words: Use mice.

Of course you would probably have to feed the mice a lot of White Castle "belly bombers" in order to get the little rodents to generate the mouth pollution that humans have.

Experts, and I'm not talking about the mice, say bad breath is a lot like the common cold: It won't kill you.

Then again, if your mouth smells like a Superfund site, you probably won't have many dates. Birthdays would be out of the question. Who would want to be around when you blew out the candles?

Thanks to a bunch of lab guys and some volunteer rodents, we know that bad breath can happen whenever the normal flow of saliva slows because of an act of Congress.

Our mouths are full of bacteria, feeding on fruitcake, funnel cake and other fun food. Oxygen-rich saliva keeps the bacteria from spreading faster than Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

During sleep, however, the saliva stream slows and the bacteria have an all-night party. You wake up to "morning breath," one of the dreaded diseases of TV land.

On the nation's TV sets, morning breath ranks up there with bald spots in terms of most-talked-about afflictions.

North Americans spend more than $500 million annually on potions that promise sweeter breath. Unlike bald spots, bad breath disappears once you have rolled out of bed.

Experts say the problem disappears once you start talking, eating or drinking. So you might as well party all the time and skip the mouthwash.

New York health columnist Jane Brody says that if you are unsure if you have bad breath, lick the back of your hand, wait a minute or two, and then check the results.

It's probably advisable not to do this in public unless your hand is covered in chocolate and you are 2 years old.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.