Who's minding the mint?

At first, this sounds like the symptoms of watching a presidential debate, but in all seriousness, it is truly scary.

When Satnam Singh's Indian American relatives gathered for dinner Tuesday night in Gaithersburg, they shared a typical meal, including a potato stew flavored with mint.

What happened later was far from typical. Singh woke to find six members of his extended family in medical distress: nauseated, disoriented and worsening quickly.

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The six became lethargic, and as the night wore on, they experienced a variety of symptoms, including heart palpitations, vomiting, sweating and loss of consciousness.

Authorities suspect that the mint may have been sprayed with a pesticide and not properly washed. On the other hand, six other family members were not sick, so who knows?

When I was young, we used to drink homemade iced tea with homegrown mint. I guess we didn't spray it with pesticides. That wouldn't have done anything to stop the neighborhood dogs, anyway.

UPDATE (7/11): Probably, it wasn't mint, after all, but rather "a potential deadly weed that apparently was mistakenly used as a cooking ingredient."