Sex work takes many forms, many of which can be safely and profitably negotiated by consenting adults. But streetwalkers have little control over their work conditions. They are frequently cheated out of pay, raped and sometimes even murdered on the job. (Most street prostitutes report having been assaulted by a client at least once, according to the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing.) They must also work under constant threat of arrest and police harassment; serving time in jail is an integral part of the job, while paying fines is an expected business expense. While the hourly pay isn't bad, it seems low considering all the indignities involved; a blow job is about $20-$50, intercourse $50-$100. Still, this profession has one advantage: demand remains constant.

The smell is just the start of the nastiness

Almost 1.5 billion tons of manure are produced annually by animals in this country-90 percent of it from cattle. That's the same weight as 14,432 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. You get the point: It's a load of crap. And it's loaded with nasty contaminants like campylobacter (the number-one cause of acute gastroenteritis in the U.S.), salmonella (the number-two cause) and E.coli 0157:H7, which can cause kidney failure in children and painful, bloody diarrhea in everybody else.

Farmers fertilize their fields with manure, but if the excrement is rife with E.coli, then so will be the vegetables. Luckily for us, researchers at the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety are knee-deep in figuring out how to eliminate these bacteria from our animals, their poop and our food. But to develop techniques to neutralize the nasty critters, they must go to the source.

"We have to wade through a lot of poop," concedes Michael Doyle, the center's director. "If you want to get the manure, you've got to grab it. Even when you wear gloves, the fecal smell tends to get embedded in your skin." Hog poop smells the worst, Doyle says, but it's chicken poop's chokingly high ammonia content that brings tears to researchers' eyes.

Doyle's group is testing everything from campylobacter-destroying bacteria-a kind of germ warfare-to killing salmonella with chemicals. The science isn't the dirtiest part of his job anymore, though: "Most of the BS I deal with is in making sure there's money to keep this place running." -from popular science

Absolute monotony

It's a job that separates the boys from the men

OK, OK, their real job title is usually something like "cryobiologist" or "laboratory technician," but at sperm banks around the country, they are known as semen washers. "Every time I interview someone I make sure I ask them, 'Do you know you'll be working with semen?' " says Diana Schillinger, the Los Angeles lab manager at the country's largest sperm bank, California Cryobank. Let's start at the beginning. Laboriously prescreened "donors" emerge from a so-called collection room that is stocked with girlie mags and triple-X DVDs. They hand over their deposit, get their $75, and leave. The semen washers take the seminal goo and place a sample under the microscope for a sperm count. Next comes the washing. The techs spin the sample in a centrifuge to separate the "plasma" from the motile cells. Then they add a preservative, and it's off to the freezer, where it can stay for 20 years. Or not. Thanks to semen washers (and in vitro fertilization), more than 250,000 babies have been delivered in the U.S. since 1995.

"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup." - from popular science

manual stimulation of barnyard animals in order to obtain semen for research purposes.

before you shake some ones hand make sure you know what kind of work they do.