There are many natural wonders in this crazy world, but none so wondrous as Wint-O-Green Lifesavers.

This question was more lofty than your garden variety Pluck Gus inquiry so I had to call in the reinforcements. Kathy McLaughlin, my friendly Nabisco representative at 1(800)8NABNET, was ready for my call.

“It takes two ingredients to make the spark:mint flavoring and crystallized sugar,” she said. “When you crack the crystal, a component in the flavoring causes it to glow. That component is methyl salicylate.”

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That’s one answer, but I just don’t send people away without at least one 50-cent word to make them feel superior to their friends. The Lifesaver effect also is called triboluminescence, the creation of light by friction.

When you crush sugar crystals, you are tearing apart chemical bonds, which creates fragments that are positively and negatively charged. This can cause tiny sparks to hop around, which, in turn, excites nitrogen molecules in the air. This creates some ultraviolet light but usually not enough to see. That is what happens with the wimpy cherry Lifesavers that failed you or a sugar cube, for that matter.

But this is where it gets good. The Wint-O-Green variety of Lifesavers has the magic ingredient, methyl salicylate. Other than providing the yummy mint flavor, methyl salicylate can absorb ultraviolet light. It then re-emits the light, thus delaying and increasing the effect. Woo-hoo – how’s that for making a short answer long?

Before you go on that all Wint-O-Green Lifesaver diet, you should know that methyl salicylate has a dirty little secret:it’s toxic. It can cause problems from fever to vomiting to respiratory melt-down and, according to www.healthanswers.com, doses of less than a teaspoon have been toxic in small children. It can kill cats, too.

A piece of the puzzle remains a mystery, though, because good old Kathy McLaughlin was unable to tell us how much methyl salicylate is in the Wint-O-Green Lifesavers.

I’m thinking, since the chemical is in other candies and medicines like Ben-Gay, it would take more rolls of Lifesavers than any one person is willing to eat to get methyl salicylate poisoning.

But you never know. . .

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