It's a common scenario: You're at the nail salon waiting for your pedi to dry, when you flip open a magazine to find a deluge of stories like "My Flip Flops Almost Killed Me," and "Here's How Diet Coke Ruined My Life."

Stories warning of the myriad ways in which everyday objects and activities can kill you are a dime a dozen in women's magazines. Even though contracting sepsis from your toothbrush or a deadly parasite from a gumball is statistically very rare, according to our favorite glossies, such things are of grave concern. What gives?

"Women's magazines come at their readers from a point of service, essentially telling them that everything in their life needs to be improved," says Jennifer Nelson, author of "Airbrushed Nation: The Lure and Loathing of Women's Magazines." "It's constant fear-mongering."

Sure, there are scary, "it happened to me" stories out there, but the reporting in women's mags is meant to pull on a reader's heartstrings -- to make her feel like she needs that magazine's help to survive.

In other words, the way that every male neighbor in a Lifetime movie is a killer of women, so are oodles of harmless objects, according to your favorite magazines. Why do we fall for this stuff?

To gain a little perspective, we decided to put together this list of the most ridiculous things women's magazines say can kill us. Here, 10 ways to develop cancer, have a stroke and go into anaphylactic shock, according to the most popular pink glossies.

The danger: A deadly strain of pneumonia, aka "Hot Tub Lung"

The source: Self

The details: "If a hot tub isn't cleaned properly, bacteria can thrive in the tub's pipes. When you turn the jets on, air bubbles rise to the surface, burst and shoot bacteria into the air."

"Breathing in the bugs can lead to anything from a bad cough to Legionnaires' disease, a rare but potentially deadly form of pneumonia."

Postscript: "Think you're safe sitting on the sidelines? Not a chance. If someone with herpes recently sat on the edge [of a hot tub] and you take their place, it is possible ... to contract genital herpes -- even through a bathing suit."

The bottom line: Make sure to wear a medical mask and full wet suit every time you soak with those dirty, herpes-infected friends of yours.

The danger: A debilitating staph infection

The source: Good Housekeeping

The account: "Jo Gilchrist found herself with an incredible back pain that just wouldn't quit....It kept getting worse and worse until the young mom had to be airlifted for emergency surgery. 'I honestly thought I was going to die,' she [said]. 'The pain was worse than childbirth.'

The details: "As doctors eventually discovered, Gilchrist had caught a serious community-associated MRSA infection that had attacked her spine."

"[Gilchrist] has a feeling she knows where she caught [it]. 'The only thing we can put it down to is the makeup brush,' she said of the tool she borrowed to cover a pimple. 'My friend did have a staph infection on her face and I was using her brush just before. I had no idea that could happen, I used to share with my friends all the time.'"

The bottom line: Dump your makeup brushes. All of them. In fact, dump your friends too. They're not worth the risk.

The danger: Slipped disks, strokes and blindness

The source: Self

The account: "She slipped out of bed and fell to the floor, the entire right side of her body limp....'I knew that if I let myself pass out, I'd probably die...' she says. 'She dragged her body to the phone to dial 911.'"

The details: "She had torn her left carotid, one of the two arteries located in the front of the neck that supply the head with blood; a clot had then formed and traveled to her brain.... Her doctors agreed that the likely cause of the tear was yoga."

The aftermath: "After her stroke, Susan Eaton avoided practicing yoga for roughly a year. 'I felt betrayed by yoga, and the hardest thing was to return to my mat,' she says."

The fine print: "It's not likely, but if you extend your neck and look toward the sky, you can tear one of the carotid artery's layers," says Eaton's neurologist...."These things can happen spontaneously, and you don't want to falsely accuse a form of exercise."

The bottom line: Another great excuse to skip yoga class this Sunday.

The danger: A parasitic infection

The source: Cosmopolitan

The account: "Four days after Nicole Luongo graduated from college, she mysteriously passed out in a bookstore. 'All of a sudden, I had a pain in my side. I dropped and couldn't get up for five minutes....It felt like the equivalent of 20 bones being broken," she says.

The details: "'I drank from a water fountain at my college graduation,' she [told her gastroenterologist]. The doctor stared at her, shaking his head. 'I'm pretty sure you have giardia.'"

The fine print: "Usually, a course of antibiotics will clear it up, but ... the doctors made a startling discovery: Nicole had an immune deficiency so severe that she lacked white blood cells....She had no immune system to recover."

The bottom line: Make sure to receive a battery of invasive blood tests before drinking anything but Perrier.