There was a time when the word ‘toxic’ was applied in only a handful of circumstances. There was the stuff that occasionally oozed out of a power station into the North Sea and made the fish go funny. Or there was the substance that Christopher Lloyd would stick in the gull-wing doored DeLorean to make it go back to 1955.
More prosaically there was the category of toxicity that included rat poison, bottles of bleach or those small sachets that drop out of cardboard boxes containing newly purchased electronic goods. They were generally labelled ‘toxic’ and for good reason.
But then this all changed. I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point in the space since Britney Spears’ 2003 hit of the same name and about five years ago, the word went bananas.
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