This old ‘helpful’ tip in a magazine hasn’t aged well (and wasn’t exactly great back then)

John Plunkett. Updated October 20th, 2020

We’re grateful to Redditor Nyxel_ for sharing this old ‘helpful’ tip in a magazine.

There’s helpful and then there’s helpful. And then there’s this.

Here are our favourite things people said about it.

‘Ye olden times really tried to speedrun environmental damages eh?’ Humongous_Schlong

‘Any time you read a warning not to do some insanely specific thing that is obviously a bad idea and you can’t imagine anyone actually thinking to do that thing in the first place, there is a corresponding article from the 50’s/60’s explaining why doing that thing is a great idea.’ skztr

‘“The burning zinc may help prevent soot formation …’ I wonder if there is any truth to that part or they had no idea so they threw the may in there like “Fuck it, we don’t know it doesn’t…”’ InfinitySnatch

This type of advice was prevalent in the past and it’s an honest to gob miracle that the boomer generation didn’t all die. Cigarettes used to be advertised as a health booster, beer was advertised to pregnant women as a low calorie food supplement, and heroine was advertised as a great cough suppressant for children by Bayer in the early 1900’s. All this garbage spoken as fact yet the powers that be still don’t believe that cannabis has medical properties despite actual studies that have shown that to be the case … the world is mad.’ General-Carrot-6305

Just in case anyone was in any doubt.

‘Burning batteries is the worst thing you could do to them and releases a ton of harmful chemicals into the air which can cause severe and significant lung problems.’ Nyxel_

Source Reddit u/Nyxel_