Last night there were calls for urgent new safety rules to control the presence of the poisons in foods intended for young children.

Researchers found feeding infants twice a day on the shop-bought baby foods such as rice porridge can increase their exposure to arsenic by up to fifty times when compared to breast feeding alone.

“There are civil guards here, with pistols. If we don’t start work now, we will be arrested.
…
Threatened with immediate imprisonment for sedition if they did not obey their new military commanders, and the show of force as in Madrid, the controllers capitulated.

Harsh but fair I feel.

Staying late in the office or working overtime is bad for the heart, researchers warned yesterday.

A large study of British civil servants found that those who regularly worked 10 or 11-hour days were up to 60 per cent more likely to suffer heart disease or die younger than those who worked shorter hours.

It’s the ever longer working hours that is killing us all and therefore we should ban long working hours….perhaps by signing up to the European 48 hour working week and the like.

What will be missed is the detail of the study:

Marianna Virtanen, who led the study at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and University College London, said that possible explanations for the link included “hidden” high blood pressure that is not always picked up, stress, anxiety or depression, and being a “Type A” personality who is highly driven, aggressive or irritable.

What they have shown is a correlation, not causation. It might be, as the researchers themselves point out, that those who desire to work those longer hours are those who are more susceptible to heart disease.

There is also the interesting point that, as working hours have fallen over the past couple of centuries then the incidence of heart disease has gone up. Yes, there are interesting reasons for that too (like we now live long enough to get heart disease) but it most certainly ain’t “long hours cause heart disease” in a simple sense.

Won’t stop people claiming it is though.

Smokers cost British companies more than £2bn ($3.2bn) last year, according to a study funded by the NHS and published on Friday.

In the first estimate of the direct cost to companies of staff who smoke, the London School of Economics said businesses lost £1.1bn from smoking-related illness absences, £914m from smoking breaks and £133m from fire damage. Indirect costs could be as high as a further £1.1bn.

So, err, half of the two billion comes from the costs of smoking breaks, not from hte costs of smoking.

This is thus showing us the costs of the smoking ban, not the costs of smoking.

Anyone remember what the figure they used for the costs of second hand smoke to business were? Higher or lower than £900 million?

All artificial colourings in food and soft drinks should be banned, a parliamentary committee urged yesterday in a report on the effect of diet on the brain.

The associate parliamentary food and health forum – a grouping of parliamentarians and outside experts such as nutritionists, doctors and the food industry – says at the end of a year-long inquiry that the Food Standards Agency should be taking a tougher line on E-numbers and additives, which some studies suggest may over-stimulate children’s brains and make them hyperactive.

Now, it might be true that some of these chemicals are not quite what we want to feed into a growing brain. I would put the onus on parents to make this decision, but I’m aware that there are those who might disagree. But that isn’t my point here, rather, it’s the insanity of their actual proposal.

For E numbers are not in fact some creation of the devil’s spawn. It’s simply a labelling system. There are certain things which are put into food and so that everyone knows what they can and cannot use when and where a single labelling system was drawn up for all in the EU. Not even I am against clarity through such cooperation (I might whine about the use of criminal law etc, but having information presented clearly is just fine by me).

Some E numbers do describe things made in the lab: others do not.

E140 Chlorophylls, Chlorophyllins:

Green colour occurs naturally in the cells of all plants and responsible for photosynthesis. A fairly unstable dye, which tends to fade easily (see E141). Not easy to obtain in a pure form and commercially available chloroyphyll usually contains other plant material impurities. The usual sources are nettles, spinach and grass with the chloroyphyll being extracted using acetone, ethanol, light petroleum, methylethylketone and diachloromethane. Lutein, E161b, may be extracted at the same time. Can be used for dyeing waxes and oils, used in medicines and cosmetics eg in chewing gum, fats and oils, ice cream, soaps, soups, sweets and, obviously, green vegetables. Has no maximum recommended daily intake and is not subject to any prohibitions.

We’re going to ban the use of chlorophyll in food now, are we? Bye bye to all green vegetables then.

E160a Alpha-carotene, Beta-carotene, Gamma-carotene

Orange or yellow plant pigments, found mainly in carrots, green leafed vegetables and tomatoes, which the human body converts into ‘Vitamin A’ in the liver. Fades on exposure to light. Can be commercially manufactured in the laboratory but beta-carotene, with some alpha-carotene and gamma-carotene present, is normally extracted from carrots and other yellow or orange fruits and vegetables with hexane. Used in butter and soft margarines, coffee sponge cakes, milk products and soft drinks.

This is to go too? This is what is the stupidity: they’ve confused the labelling system, the E numbers, with things that might do harm. But E numbers are simply a labelling scheme, nothing else. A blanket ban on the use of things with E numbers is insane.

E101 & E101a Riboflavin

Riboflavin is yellow or orange-yellow in colour and in addition to being used as a food colouring it is also used to fortify some foods. It can be found in such foods as baby foods, breakfast cereals, sauces, processed cheese, fruit drinks and vitamin-enriched milk products as well as being widely used in vitamin supplements. Also known as vitamin B2 occurs naturally in milk, cheese, leafy green vegetables, liver and yeast but exposure to light will destroy the Riboflavin in these natural sources. In processed foods it is very likely to be Genetically Modified as it can be produced synthetically using genetically modified Bacillus subtilis, altered to both increase the bacteria production of riboflavin and to introduce an antibiotic (ampicillin) resistance marker. It is an easily absorbed, water-soluble micronutrient with a key role in maintaining human health. Like the other B vitamins, it supports energy production by aiding in the metabolising of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Vitamin B2 is also required for red blood cell formation and respiration, antibody production, and for regulating human growth and reproduction. It is essential for healthy skin, nails, hair growth and general good health, including regulating thyroid activity. Any excess is excreted in the urine but as the human body does not store Riboflavin it is thought deficiency is common. Riboflavin also helps in the prevention or treatment of many types of eye disorders, including some cases of cataracts. It may assist bloodshot, itching or burning eyes and abnormal sensitivity to light.

Cretins, simply cretins.

E150 Caramel

See?

Can we hang them all?

(Looking at the actual report, they took evidence on tartrazine alone and then decided that all artificial colourings should be banned. Swing bastards, swing.)

Motorists could be banned from smoking behind the wheel of their own cars while driving them as part of their job, it has emerged.

Isn’t that wonderful? Your car, with no one else in it, becomes another place where you may not smoke. It gets better too:

Prof Richard West, the Government’s leading smoking adviser, has called for a complete ban on smoking at the wheel.

He said: "It may seem draconian but the Government should legislate."

Not even the fig leaf about passive smoking is there. Just, I’m agin it so it should be banned.

Now, where did the wife put that festive length of hempen rope she bought to lower my blood pressure….

No, not the fact they’re now  saying that as wine has got stronger astonishing, now we need to define a large glass as three units, but this:

Men are advised to drink no more than 21 units per week and women only 14.

Just a few weeks ago it was revelaed that there is no medical basis for that advice at all. It was simply made up out of thin air. In fact, in order to have the same health risks as a teetotaller, men need to be consuming 60 units a week.

Now I don’t mind information campagns about public health, but I would rather like them to be accurate. Consumption of alcohol follows (as with so many other things), in its health effects, a curve. A U shaped one. And the bottom of the U is well beyond what we’re being told are the safe drinking limits.

So stop lying already, eh?

A lollipop lady has been banned from wearing festive fancy dress because of safety fears.

…

But after a complaint by two parents, the city council said she could not take children across the road unless she wore her reflective coat.

So, let’s have a look at the costume:

Erm, a reflective coat is actually going to be more visible than that? So, no, it’s no reasonable and the ‘elfn’safety police should burn in hell.

Bar staff have seen huge health benefits from the ban on smoking in public places, a study by the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre in Warwick – funded by Cancer Research UK – has found. Researchers tested the air quality in 40 pubs, bars and restaurants across the country and measured the level of cotinine – the metabolic byproduct of nicotine – in the blood of those who worked there.

Quite amazing how you can measure the effect of smoking in public places by measuring something on private property really, isn’t it?