The Consumer Product Safety Commission maintains the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a massive, anonymous database that tracks why Americans show up to the ER. That includes cases where someone arrives sheepish, uncomfortable, and very aware that gravity is not a valid explanation. Every year, doctors log what they find. Every year, the list gets longer.

Medical journals have been documenting the trend for decades. A study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine estimated nearly 39,000 hospital visits per year related to rectal foreign bodies, with most patients middle-aged and male. More than half involved sex toys. The rest fall into a category best described as “how did this even occur?”

Researchers note that many cases escalate because people try to fix the situation themselves first. Pliers, tweezers, coat hangers, and other tools frequently appear in follow-up imaging, which explains why doctors beg patients to stop improvising.

So what exactly made it into the official records last year? Here’s a rearranged selection of items doctors reported removing, pulled from government data and emergency medicine case studies.

Some of the worst items found in People’s butts

• A full shampoo bottle, listed twice, once blamed on boredom
• A baseball, documented with the explanation “to see what it felt like”
• A corn cob holder
• A turkey baster
• A wine stopper
• A plastic cleanser bottle filled with liquid
• Eyeglasses
• A rock
• Two pencils
• A vape pen
• A flashlight
• A battery-powered light
• A film canister
• A rectangular travel toothbrush
• A dog chew toy
• Uncooked pasta
• An egg
• Marbles
• A sandal
• A doorknob
• Beard clippers wrapped in plastic, cited as constipation relief
• A light bulb, inserted glass-side first
• A plastic coat hanger, altered so the person could drive to the ER
• A corn-cob style pipe
• A thermos, discovered during a police body scan

Emergency physician Kenji Oyasu, who works in Chicago, summed up the situation in a viral TikTok when asked about the strangest object he’d ever removed. It was a full-size Yankee Candle. “The desktop jar,” he said. “The whole thing.” He explained that suction turns removal into a medical problem, not a pulling contest.

Doctors stress that these cases aren’t common, but they’re common enough to keep appearing in peer-reviewed journals. They also tend to get worse the longer someone waits.

This isn’t about shaming people. It’s a heads-up that, if you decide to stick something questionable where the “sun don’t shine,” the government will write it down for the world to see. 

The post The 25 Worst Items Pulled From People’s Butts in 2025, According to the US Government appeared first on VICE.

That is, don’t be like one of the dummies that the government blows up on the National Mall each summer to teach Americans about the hazards of using fireworks. Keep your head on straight, please.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission — a small agency responsible for regulating things like toaster ovens, strollers, and fireworks — hosts the safety demonstration. Using mannequins and watermelons as visual aids, the agency reminds viewers not to let little kids play with sparklers, not to light fireworks indoors, and definitely not to shoot fireworks tubes off of your head.

It might sound like painfully obvious advice for the government to dole out, but people die from fireworks accidents each year, and thousands get injured. Last year, 9,100 fireworks-related injuries sent people to the ER, and at least five people died, according to the CPSC.

Still, the agency is trying not to be too much of a downer about America’s birthday. In the last few years, it’s adopted meme culture to make its safety warnings resonate on social media. As watermelons exploded into a gazillion pieces last week, CPSC’s social media specialist Joseph Galbo live-tweeted the demonstration with his signature whimsy.

“I shared this picture I’m calling ‘Peaceful Watermelon,’ where it’s just the watermelon sitting on top of this podium, just with no idea what’s gonna happen to it,” Galbo said. “It’s really tragic, in a way. And the follow-up later will be mildly traumatizing to folks, but that’s what this is all about.”

As you’re celebrating this week, dear reader, please use your melon.

The post The U.S. Government Made Fireworks Explosion Porn Just For You appeared first on VICE.

Government-run social media accounts, excluding the president’s, tend to be pretty normie. So when the official account for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) tweeted an Abraham Lincoln meme that warned against the consumption of Tide Pods, people naturally had some questions.

“An oral history of this tweet, please,” wrote one tweeter. “Truly, this is the weirdest timeline,” another Twitter user mused. “Is this real life?” a third asked.

It’s important to note that the Abe Lincoln Tide Pod meme is just the latest weird tweet from the CPSC. If you peruse its Twitter timeline, you’ll notice lots of other odd safety warnings:

Still, like the people of Twitter, I needed to know more about the origins of the Abe Lincoln Tide Pod meme, so I reached out to Joseph Galbo, the social media specialist at the CPSC, to get the full story.

“We have randomly used presidents’ birthdays, like other significant dates, to draw attention to safety issues,” he explained in an email. “In that spirit, we used President Lincoln’s birthday today to highlight a serious safety issue: the intentional ingestion of laundry pods, as well as the risk of unintentional usage.”

This isn’t the first time the CPSC has used weird presidential memes to promote its message of consumer safety. Check out this George Washington smoke alarm meme from June 2017:

So how did the CPSC staff decide to use Abraham Lincoln to promote the safe use of laundry pods?

“Like a lot of our graphics, putting this one together started with the stock photo. We were really drawn to that image of Lincoln. If you study his face, he’s looking toward the ground… concerned maybe? Pensive? About what? The intentional ingestion of laundry pods and the risk of unintentional usage? That’s what it looked like to us,” Galbo said.

“In all seriousness, this is part of our larger strategy to reach people in new and exciting ways to help save lives,” he explained. “We know product safety is not top-of-mind for everyone all the time. As one of the smaller federal regulatory agencies, we’re always looking for unique ways to cut through the noise and get people thinking about safety.”

At least one government agency has a healthy sense of humor.

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Related: Why the Hell Are Teens Eating Tide Pods?

The post The Story Behind the Government’s Weird Abe Lincoln Tide Pod Tweet appeared first on VICE.