Letters: Temper, temper
In his article ‘Why must I be a teenager at all?’ (6 March), Barry Bogin
writes that we must first be clear about what adolescence is.
My wife, of considerable child rearing and teaching experience, has
no difficulty with the concept. It is, she confides, bad temper from 11
to 20.
Colin Reid Newbury, Berkshire
Letters: Popeye's problem
It seems a new scientific myth is establishing itself. At the beginning
of this century, everybody knew spinach was good for you.
Later, this assertion proved to be untrue: there is not that much iron
in spinach, and moreover, the body cannot use this iron.
People who love debunking popular myths tell us that the idea of healthy
spinach is due to a decimal error in research done in the late 19th century
(1871?), and that this error was discovered by German investigators. However,
all these people only seem to refer to one another, and no one gives the
original sources.
Do any of your readers know these primary sources? Who published what
when? And is it true that the German research was not believed because it
was assumed to be war propaganda?
Hans van Maanen Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Letters: Too busy
John Ferguson’s assurances (Letters, 6 March) that pharmacists can give
full support to the budding non-smoker when they are using nicotine patches
may be right in principle but, based on my own experiences, I doubt it always
occurs in practice. In a busy chemist’s the pressure to serve the public
will inevitably mean that some customers will slip through.
I remember that, when prescriptions charges underwent one of their price
hikes in the 1980s, a representative of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
said that chemists were not tax collectors for the government and they would
guide the customers to the cheapest option they could find. However, what
happens is different. As I am a sufferer of diabetes, my insulin syringes
are tax-exempt. But when I have to buy my syringes, more often than not
I have to remind the pharmacist of this fact. Indeed, I once even had to
help a pharmacist fill in the tax form.
I know that pharmacists are highly trained people, but to dismiss the
concerns voiced over counselling because pharmacists can do it over the
counter, is to ignore the truth of the over-pressed pharmacist on the ground.
Peter Kyberd Kidlington, Oxfordshire
Letters: Hard times at JET
By its actions the Commission of the European Communities has shown
complete disregard for equality and justice, even in one of its own research
institutions, and for normal democratic and legal processes by which mistakes
are remedied.
Staff of the JET Joint Undertaking, a European Community nuclear fusion
research project based in Britain, learned last week that the project’s
top management body, the JET Council, will block implementation of independent
proposals to end discrimination against British staff at JET. These British
staff, who have won their positions in open direct competition with applicants
from other Community countries, receive much inferior terms, conditions
and opportunities compared to JET staff of other nationalities.
In seeking to remedy this intolerable apartheid at JET, British staff,
acting in the most reasonable and responsible way, put their case to the
European Court of Justice in 1983, and in a petition to the Parliament of
the European Communities in 1990, winning the argument at both stages, but
not justice.
Subsequently, on demand by the European Parliament, Filippo Pandolfi,
Vice-President of the Commission, charged an independent panel with making
recommendations to end discrimination against British staff at JET. All
JET staff welcomed the so-called ‘Pandolfi Panel Report’, published in September
1992, as reasonable and fair and asked for its immediate implementation.
The Commission, after much activity at a high level, and in collusion with
the JET Council, are now preparing to sink these recommendations in a sea
of obfuscation.
A. Gondhalekar JET Joint Undertaking Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Letters: Chance to save
Re ‘False alarms’ (Letters, 6 March): while I agree that the widespread
use of baby alarms by the general public may not result in the prevention
of some cot deaths, surely the fact that some lives will be saved is enough
to warrant their use?
My own daughter was brought home from hospital on a monitor but it was
subsequently removed when she was deemed ‘safe’. We bought our own monitor
privately to put our minds at rest, and thank God we did. Josie would not
be here were it not for that little flashing light and annoying piercing
beep. Our own monitor does not give false alarms, is silent unless triggered
and is totally reliable. True, it does not work in the pram or car but it
works beautifully in her cot. The monitor is what keeps my sanity and lets
me get any sleep at all.
I refuse to believe that an alarm which detects breathing by monitoring
chest or stomach movement would not detect a child’s ‘death’. I admit that,
in some cases, even if the most capable doctors were on the scene when the
alarm went off, some cot deaths would still occur, but at least the chance
to save a life is there. Surely to find that a child has been dead in a
cot undetected for an hour or so is a million times worse than at least
being there at the exact moment the problem starts and having the chance
to resuscitate?
The argument that unqualified parents would be of no use at the time
of alarm is ludicrous. We have little training other than a basic first
aid course yet, when our daughter stopped breathing, yelling, shouting,
shaking, backrubbing, turning her upside down and all the instinctive things
we did, worked beautifully.
Lesley Sloss Kingston, Surrey
Letters: Sensitive issue
The article ‘How Britain hides its acid soil’ (27 February) implies
a plot to hide data by British scientists and government alike. There are
two main charges. First, statistics were used to conceal areas of sensitive
soils on critical loads maps. Second, data submitted for European maps omit
these areas.
On the first point, the 10-kilometre summary map for soil critical
loads displays dominant critical loads values derived from the 1-kilometre
map data. This map was chosen by the scientists working on the maps to provide
a convenient scale for displaying the information and for comparing critical
loads with pollution data (since these are mapped at a similar scale). By
choosing the dominant critical load, the general pattern of critical loads
was retained on the map; we avoided overemphasis of the sensitive and non-sensitive
areas. While small areas of sensitivity may ‘disappear’ from some parts
of the map, larger areas of sensitivity ‘expand’ to occupy entire 10-kilometre
grid squares. The resulting national distribution of sensitive soils is
essentially the same for the 1-kilometre and 10-kilometre maps, differing
in relation to total area by only 2 per cent at most for each sensitivity
class.
On the second point I must stress that the full 1-kilometre data set
was used for making European maps. Contrary to what the article suggests,
these data have been presented and discussed at many UN/Economic Commission
for Europe meetings. No data have been hidden or withheld. So the European
map of critical loads (usually a 95 per cent protection map which overemphasises
sensitivity for the purposes of abatement strategy modelling) represents
Britain in exactly the same way as other countries.
Keith Bull Institute of Terrestial Ecology Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Letters: Arrogance
After reading your Comment titled ‘Breaking the species barrier’ (30
January), I conclude that human arrogance knows no bounds. Instead of funding
costly research projects in xenotransplantation the money would be better
spent educating people on the benefits of donating organs (1971 people
died in car accidents in Australia in 1992). This way, innocent animals
would not pay with their lives for our morbid and deep-seated fear of death.
M. Leembruggen Melbourne, Australia
Letters: Not so naive
Regarding ‘Made by myth’ (Letters, 27 February): I should like to defend
the common sense of the ‘naive old lady’ whose intentions of warming her
pet clearly went rather too far.
The use of the faint overnight warmth of an old-fashioned oven heated
by an adjoining wood or coal fire is well known – at least to an older
generation and to many farmers’ wives. Many a back country kitchen has resuscitated
lambs and piglets or other farm newborns from hypothermic beginnings, especially
snowstorms or floods. In the case of lambs, the result is a kitchen full
of hungry infants underfoot, while the farmer is likely to bring more in
the next day or two, to the distraction of the cook . . .
Midwives in urban and country places have also had to be resourceful.
In Auckland, New Zealand, my family tells of a great-aunt who was placed
in the oven – which still stands in the kitchen of a Historic Places Trust
house – while her mother was given initial care. And this was in the late
19th century.
Alison Williamson London
Letters: Salami alarm
With reference to the enclosed wrapper from some Italian salami, I note
that one of the ingredients is potassium nitrate. How is it that the European
Community is happy to send us food containing nitrates while prosecuting
the UK over parts per million of nitrate in our water?
R. E. Durrant Watford, Hertfordshire
Letters: Vested interest
While I greatly appreciate your reviewer’s generous remarks (27 February)
about my book A History of Antarctic Science, I must correct him on the
subject of the string vest. This was developed for use by the army under
Arctic conditions, from an idea already conceived in Norway, by Colin Bertram
and the late Brian Roberts at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the
beginning of the Second World War. Their work was based on experience gained
during the 1934-37 British Graham Land Expedition, which in the review has
been confused with the sojourn of T. W. Bagshaw and M. C. Lester in Graham
Land in 1920-22.
Gordon Fogg Llandegfan, Anglesey
Letters: Subway man
Sheila Mould (Letters, 20 February) bemoans the constant roadwork disruption
in Edinburgh and proposes joint service trenches. London has 9 miles of
such subterranean passages. John ‘Subway’ Williams patented them in 1822
and was an indefatigable promoter of the idea, resulting in ‘pipe subways’
being constructed piecemeal since 1859 by the Metropolitan Board of Works
and its successors under every great metropolitan street improvement.
These subways generally consist of an arched brick tunnel about 15 feet
wide and 7 feet high, running just under the pavement, and accessed through
large rectangular horizontal grilles. They carry gas, water, telephone,
electricity, London Hydraulic Power mains (now used for Mercury cables),
and no doubt cable TV feeds. I understand that the local authorities can
compel their use where they exist.
However, they are disliked by the utilities, on the premise that water,
gas and electricity do not mix, and accidents will happen. Hanging over
them is a fear of a repetition of the High Holborn explosion of 20 December
1928, when an unjudicious Post Office engineer flicked a lighter to find
a ventilating fan switch, and 210 yards of the street erupted in a huge
linear explosion, with secondary explosions in the adjoining buildings causing
fires that burnt till the next day. After a public inquiry, 拢176,000
compensation was paid, and reconstruction took eight months.
This was not a MBW subway, however, but T. W. Rammell’s abandoned 1863
Pneumatic Despatch tube, which was only about 5 feet in diameter and not
naturally ventilated.
Roger Morgan Subterranea Britannica London
Letters: Light fantastic
Re ‘Eternal life for light bulbs’ (20 February): an error often arises
in published calculations of the ability of low-consumption lighting units
to pay back installation costs and to reduce the carbon emissions of power
generating plant through reduced energy consumption. Almost all the energy
used in lighting units is dissipated as heat. Indoors, it contributes to
the warming of rooms. So, if low consumption lighting is fitted in a space
which has thermostatically controlled heating, the thermostat will simply
turn up the wick to maintain energy inputs at their previous level.
This is an example of the way complexity rules the world of environmental
dilemmas, while many critical decisions are taken on simplistic analyses.
In marketing low-consumption lighting, apart from the neglect of interactions
between lighting and heating systems, little has been said about the energy
expended in the manufacture of the units. They contain, amongst other things,
evacuated glass tubes, highly refined gases, solid state electronics and
copper wiring – all of which are energy-intensive in manufacture.
So, does anyone have some reliable empirical data about these units?
What is their energy performance under real conditions, if you take the
whole energy system into account? And what are the environmental implications
of preferring them over their incandescent rivals if a cradle-to-grave (manufacture-to-disposal)
view is taken?
Mike Harrison RSA London