Wal-Mart flip-flop recall e-mail: True. And gross.

January 11th, 2008, 12:29 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Sam Mittelsteadt

One of my sisters is always sending me forwarded e-mails — you know the kind, the ones where you have to scroll down through three screens of “fwd” and comments before you get to the original message. And, save one, every single message is categorized as untrue on Snopes.com, which collects urban legends and reports on their veracity, or lack thereof. (My most recent reply to her consisted solely of the sentence, “WOMAN, YOU’RE KILLING ME!” and a link to the Snopes post that disproved yet another Internet hoax.)

My sister-in-law, however, usually doesn’t forward on such effluvium. And her e-mail, about a woman who got a rash from some discount flip-flops at Wal-Mart, turned out to be … true. (If you don’t like rash-y photos, avert your eyes after the jump.)

The Snopes report talks about a Florida woman who bought a pair of Sand-N-Sun flip-flops and shortly thereafter developed a chemical burn or rash that corresponded with the thong part of the sandal. On her Web page she says she only wore the sandals “15 minutes here, a half-hour there” and isn’t allergic to latex; as a result of this and other reports, Wal-Mart pulled the sandals for safety’s consideration.

Six days in her feet looked like this …

But quickly devolved to this in about a month (she doesn’t mention when she stopped wearing them). ….

And seven months later, they still looked like this.

Now, not every statement in the forwarded message is true, obviously, but the base story is. Snopes points out that it’s not known if there was indeed a “noxious chemical” included in the rubber or whether she just had an unusual allergic reaction to “otherwise innocuous chemical used in the manufacturing process.”

So is it safe to buy flip-flops at Wal-Mart now? Probably yeah. Is it smart to wear any shoes when they start to give you a sensation like a chemical burn? Definitely not.

sammit

WHAT SAM WORE: 1/11/08

The suit: Pinstriped new wool suit by Alfani (Macy’s, Scottsdale Fashion Square, during their 2007 men’s suit sale)
The shirt: Textured spread-collar button down by Hugo Boss (Last Chance, 2007)
The tie: Kenneth Cole Reaction (Macy’s, Biltmore Fashion Park, January 2008))
The shoes: Black leather “platypus shoes” by BCBG (Hand-me-down from my ex (2000-01), which I liked so much I bought them in brown, too.)