Radio stunt leads to woman’s death
Don Day | January 15, 2007KDND/Sacramento held a contest — “Hold your wee for a Wii,” plying contestants with liberal amounts of water, and seeing who could last the longest.
A woman died.
The AP reports an autopsy shows Jennifer Strange died of “water intoxication” — that her salt levels were so diluted that the cells in her body began to swell. Strange wanted to win the popular game system for her three children.
The contest started with half-pint bottles, then moved to large containers. It’s unclear how much water Strange drank.
Update: The station pulled the morning show off the air.
A station I know of did the same contest, but had the smarts to include some pizza during the contest. You just can not intake that much water without food to keep the salt levels in balance. Whewnever it comes to a contest involving food or drink, check with a doctor to keep your company out of trouble.
… and to keep people from dying.
Another Red Letter Day for terrestrial radio.
These type of people have no business working in radio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia
I knew about “Hyponatremia” in Jr. High school.
How come anyone in the “Chain of Command” at Entercom/Sacramento didn’t put the squash on this???
I hope they “wipe out” everyone involved.
A very sad story…:(
It’s normally pretty rare.
The girl that died may not have eaten for several hours, then guzzled alot of water in a short time, too quickly for the kidneys to handle which is about 1.5 litres per hour depending on the person.
No food and several litres of water in a short time make for a nasty electrolyte imbalance.
A little homework on the part of the station staff that came up with this contest could have prevented a death.
Not only did she drink the water, but the contest was who could drink the most without using the bathroom. That could have added to it. They say this is very rare, but with a little research you could learn it’s POSSIBLE, and I think possible is enough to not do it.
Exactly
I LOVE how management has pulled the morning show off the air, when they HAVE to have approved this contest. Why don’t they pull THEMSELVES out of the front office?
Anyone want to bet that their “investigation” “finds” that the morning show “went too far” and absolves management?
You are more than likely THE, the firm I work for has the attiude that if the building you are working in were to fall on you, it would be your fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time…. I’ll bet the lawyers can smell blood on this one.
What I meant to say was, “you are more than likely RIGHT The, The…”
Well, the other show has fallen. TEN people associated with the morning show have been canned. None of them appear to be management. By the way, what friggin’ morning show has TEN people working on it? Yeah, Howard Stern perhaps, but what LOCAL morning show has a posse like that? Certainly none that *I* ever worked on.
Here’s the gory details:
http://www.nbc11.com/news/10762819/detail.html
Oops, make that the other SHOE has fallen.
I assume part of the 10 are probably the promotions staff.