Mothballs are used to keep moth larva from infesting clothes. They contain paradichlorobenzene, a chemical also found in air fresheners and insect repellents. Exposure to the substance can cause liver and kidney failure, as well as severe anemia.

Doctors discovered this new habit in teenagers when 18 year old French twins showed up at the Hospital of Timone in Marseille, France with puzzling symptoms. Both young women had scaly skin on their arms and legs and appeared to be mentally sluggish and unsteady on their feet. The women's doctors were stumped because the women had very similar symptoms and there was no family history of the problem. The doctors discovered the root of the problem when they found a bag of mothballs stashed in the hospital room. The women had been inhaling air from the bag for ten minutes a day; the sicker twin had been chewing half a mothball a day for two months.

A report of this new phenomenon was published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Chewing on mothballs just to get high? Now I think I might have heard everything!

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