Letter: Significant parts
In the box in the article on the search for a safer process to decaffeinate
coffee, the author states that ‘the amounts of chemical solvents left in
beans .. are very small: less than 10 parts per billion (‘Anyone for designer
coffee?)’, 22/29 December).
This sounds small, but isn’t. Parts per billion equates to micrograms
per litre. Many chemicals have biological effects in small amounts. So the
presence of nanograms or even picograms of a biologically active chemical
may be significant, even more so if excretion is poor or body fat or liver
storage is involved.
R Allen Saltau Miles Australia
Letter: Natural additives
As a good biologist, Richard Weinstein will know that the fungicides
he worked with under strict conditions in a laboratory are unlikely to have
been at a similar concentration when they were subsequently used to spray
crops (Letters, 12 January). To balance the argument, some natural mycotoxins
are so potent that laboratory work on them has been abandoned on safety
grounds.
There is hardly a more toxic food additive than clostridium botulinum,
yet its distribution is also fairly indiscriminate, and those who choose
wholefood because they believe it to be free from preservatives or pesticides
must accept the inevitable additives left by pests, bacteria or moulds.
Today’s consumer apparently wants ready-to-eat meals. These involve
complex operations: cook-chill preparation, sale from refrigerated cabinets
of uncertain temperature to customers who drive them around in the sun for
a couple of hours, storage in a refrigerator of unknown calibration, and
reheating in a microwave oven for a time which may or may not heat them
adequately. If we are to use less chemistry, we must produce better education.
Peter Bateman The Society of Food Hygiene Technology Lymington, Hampshire
Letter: Teaching project
I am an upper-sixth science student at Oxford High School. After my
A levels I am taking a year off to do voluntary work. I have been accepted
by the charity ‘Project Trust’ to teach science in Zimbabwe. I will be teaching
science to classes of up to 40 or more children to secondary school standard.
I would very much appreciate any support or publicity that you could
give me. I am happy to write a short report about my project and to send
back progress reports from Zimbabwe.
Lisa Clampitt Cothill Farmhouse Blackhorse Lane Cothill Abingdon Oxfordshire
Letter: Formation flying
The neatly baited hook in ‘Flock law’ is taken without hesitation (Letters,
8 December). Birds which flock and indulge in ‘simultaneous’ manoeuvres
do not actually do so. Firstly, they possess good, mainly non-binocular
vision, which covers a wide field of view. Secondly, their reactions to
visual stimuli are very much quicker than humans’. It follows that the rear
birds of a flock will see the ‘wave’ of leaders turn at the same time that
the birds near the front do, and the whole flock will turn in apparent unison
to follow.
I’m afraid that flocking does not demonstrate the wonders of telepathy,
at least not on the available evidence, but I must confess that watching
flock behaviour supplies me with wonders enough, even though they can (so
far) be explained rationally.
Mike Blair Stanmore, Middlesex
Letter: Coogan's bluff
Ariadne carried a piece on the movie The Mesa of Lost Women, starring
Jackie Coogan (15 December). Despite her efforts she could not find mention
of the movie in any journal or film encyclopedia. It is, however, listed
in the Speelfilm Encyclopedie, published by Rostrum, Haarlem, The Netherlands.
Although it does not give more information on the contents than was apparently
given in the television guide, it does add that Coogan’s role of mad scientist
‘certainly does not gain him the viewers’ sympathy’. In the encyclopedia,
the movie gets a two-star rating, which means it is of average quality.
Your correspondent’s decision to give it a miss was probably justified.
J Brand Bologna, Italy
Letter: Special case
I think that Huw Price misinterprets John Bell’s view (Letters, 12 January).
He did not want to ‘avoid faster than light nonlocal connections’. He preferred
to be rid of Einstein’s special relativity. Einstein, incidentally, did
not believe in free will, it not being a concept that has a place in science;
nor has the concept of ‘determinism’. What we need is to overrun the determined
state, as we know it in science, and this we have been doing ever since
we learnt to think and put two and two together.
Harry West Honiton Devon
Letter: Ecology of war
In reference to Fred Pearce’s article on the ecological consequences
of a Gulf war, I would like to correct his statement that the ecological
effects of the Vietnam war were examined only after the war had ended (‘Desert
fires cast a shadow over Asia’, 12 January). During the Vietnam war both
American and Vietnamese scientists were already studying the ecological
effects of the war, particularly the use of defoliants.
Bert Pfeiffer and Arthur Westing were part of a team that travelled
to Vietnam under armed guard to investigate the environmental damage caused
largely by Agent Orange. Vo Quy, a Vietnamese scientist, also risked his
life to witness the loss of forest south of the 17th parallel. A group of
concerned citizens and scientists protested against the use of defoliation,
which began in 1961, and finally pressured the US government to stop the
spraying of herbicides on the Vietnamese countryside in 1971 after 72 million
litres of herbicide had destroyed 2.2 million hectares of forest and affected
seriously half the arable land in southern Vietnam.
Elizabeth Kemf World Wide Fund for Nature Gland, Switzerland
Letter: Room at the top
The sentiments expressed by Eric Crew (Letters, 5 January) about it
being absurd to wear a tie or own a Porsche, reinforce my opposition (‘The
wages of science’, Forum, 8 December). If people like Crew say that scientists
should be ‘casual and happy’, what hope is there for science to be a respected
and reasonably well-paid profession? There is no need to be tycoon-like;
parity with other professions is a reasonable goal. And why shouldn’t top
scientists have Porsches?
Crew’s statement that an FRS is worth 100 Porsches and a free life ticket
for Concorde (by my reckoning worth about 5 million Pounds ) is somewhat
over the top. Perhaps we could invite Fellows to put a value on the accolade
– these days everything has a price. With that sort of money it would be
possible to do research independently of grant-awarding bodies.
Alun Rees Rustington West Sussex
Letter: Pope's sanction
In his article on disasters Mick Hamer refers to the Santiago El Mercurio’s
statement ‘the newly invented mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Mary’
as derisive (‘Lessons from a diastrous past’, 22/29 December). Ths may not
have been the case, as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which
holds that Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception
in the womb of her mother, was only accepted officially in 1854 under pope
Pius IX (although it had been argued since the 12th century), just nine
years before the newspaper article was written.
Charles Gray London
Letter: Animal procedures
I am writing in my capacity as chairman of the research subcommittee
of the Animal Procedures Committee about the Home Office scheme to support
research which could lead to a reduction, refinement or replacement of the
use of living animals for experimental or other scientific purposes. The
Animal Procedures committee advises the Home Office on the priorities for
such research and assists in the selection and evaluation of proposals.
Much work is already being done by charitable bodies and commercial
concerns to find alternatives to the use of living animals. But it is important
that those involved in research work and safety testing are not only involved
but are seen to be involved in seeking alternatives.
I am pleased to announce, therefore, that limited funds will be available
from April 1991 for research in Britain into the reduction, refinement or
replacement of the use of living animals in scientific procedures. The Animal
Procedures Committee will give preference to research proposals which have
a good prospect of leading to the refinement or replacement of procedures
which use large numbers of animals or which involve substantial suffering.
The committee also continues to be interested in the possibility of developing
better measures of disease, discomfort and stress in laboratory animals,
and in improvements in the husbandry of such animals. Grants will normally
be awarded for periods up to three years.
Details of the research scheme and how to apply may be obtained from
Peter Edmundson, E Division, Room 971, Home Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate,
London SW1H 9AT.
Andrew Huxley Animal Procedures Committee London
Letter: Type right
I would like to make three points about Michael Price’s article on keyboards
(‘It’s time to make type easy’, Forum, 12 January). I believe that his conclusion
is incorrect: the qwerty keyboard was certainly designed, after much statistical
study, to separate frequently used letters, but the object was not to slow
down typists but to permit them to type faster without the keys jamming.
If he wants a fast, efficient, easy to use keyboard, then investigate
the Agenda by Microwriter, which has a keyboard that uses chords of keys
to create characters and, surprisingly, is easier to learn and faster than
a qwerty keyboard – it even has the ‘e’ placed under the index finger as
Price suggests.
And on the subject of easy to use keyboards, does anyone make a telephone
with the keypad the right way up, with the same layout of the digits as
every calculator?
Andrew Beattie Basingstoke, Hampshire
Letter: Type right
Michael Price’s plea for a more logical typewriter keyboard is one of
many. In 1932, Dvorak and Dealey studied exhaustively the frequency of letter
sequences and devised a theoretically optimum keyboard for the English language
(known as the Dvorak keyboard). Their patent (US 2 040 248) has long expired,
so anyone can freely copy it to reprogram their word processor.
Peter Neville Digswell Hertfordshire
Letter: Safety at work
I was interested to see Herbert Eisner’s article on safety and self-regulation,
which echoes attitudes still held by those who occupied positions in the
Health and Safety Executive and its predecessor organisations before the
Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 (Talking Point, 12 January).
My difficulty with his thesis is that it does not correspond with the
facts. There are considerably more scientists and engineers in HSE now than
there were in 1974. The reduction in the cadres of certain inspectorates
(now being reversed) took place after 1980 and had nothing to do with the
philosophy of ‘self regulation’ by industry in the Robens report; it was
entirely the result of the government’s general decision to reduce the size
of the civil service by about a fifth.
As Eisner says, there were rather more visits and rather more prosecutions
(by the Factory Inspectorate) in 1974 than there are now, when levels are
artificially depressed by the large proportion of the inspector force under
training. But where, in 1974, were the 12,000 or so enforcement notices
we now issue – a power more draconian and expensive to employers than prosecution?
Where was the world leadership in major hazards regulation that HSE can
fairly claim, or the ability to advise (and enforce) on safety management?
Can he recall in his day that the nuclear, mines or quarries inspectorates
prosecuted anyone?
As the Deputy Director General, David Eves, recently pointed out in
a letter to The Independent, HSE does not regard itself as an adviser, but
as something much more powerful – an adviser with powers to compel. And
we are able to exercise those powers now in the protection not only of workers,
but of the public from industrial harms.
Eisner speaks of self regulation by industry as though that meant withdrawal
of oversight – it means nothing of the kind, nor did Robens suggest that.
It means that a responsibility for safety and health is legally fixed on
employer and employee, and that in return, they cooperate with us in producing
and agreeing (on a huge scale) the codes of guidance that now regulate safety
and health in every manner of process. The new more flexible form of the
law certainly does make greater demands on inspectors, but it leads to a
more thorough approach. And it is imperative that we apply tools that take
account of the speed of technological change.
As to the future, we are vey glad now to welcome as additions to HSE
certain of the regulatory bodies that Eisner castigates for their alleged
failures over certain major disasters, and which are almost exclusively
composed of highly qualified and expert technologists. We think the learning
will be mutual.
John Rimington, Director General Health and Safety Executive London