Correction
Correction: The article “Can Russian ‘hot’ logs fill American timber gap?”
(This Week, 8 October) gave incorrect figures for radiation given to treat
logs and food. These should have been 500 to 1000 grays for effective
treatment of logs and 150 to 200 grays” for fruit and vegetables.
Letters to the Editor
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Boney's hair
I read with interest the recent article relating to the finding of only
trace elements of arsenic in Napoleon’s hair at the time of his death (This
Week, 24 September and Letters 22 October).
I was especially pleased with these findings as they corroborated the work
that my colleagues and I did in 1982. With the use of neutron activation
analysis on documented strands of Napoleon’s hair, we also came to the
conclusion than Napoleon did not die of arsenic poisoning. We felt that the
trace amounts of arsenic was probably due to the medication he was being given
at the time (tartar emetic). These findings were reported in Nature in 1982
(vol 299, p 627).
Dating desired
Re Alistair McFarlane’s letter about the dating of the Queen of Sheba’s
visit to Solomon (8 October), can I simply point out that a similar point was
made in 1953 by the much mistreated Emmanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos,
Chapter 3). He convinced me years ago. I therefore join McFarlane in awaiting
a carbon dating of those seeds.
Safe society
I am pleased to be able to assure Feedback (8 October) that the multitudes
of users of the Royal Society’s main lecture hall have been safe from the
effects of asbestos over the past 26 years. Asbestos was found earlier this
year during surveys for a major renovation of the hall. Measurements and
inspection showed the asbestos to be in a safe condition, but nonetheless we
decided that it was best to use the refurbishment to remove it all.
The good news is that the asbestos is now cleared from the hall, and we are
reclaiming other rooms affected by the work. The hall and dining room will
remain closed until the New Year, but I trust Feedback – and the many users of
our premises who have been disrupted by this work – will consider that the new
hall, with improved facilities and more flexible design, is well worth the
trouble.
Re renewables
Steuart Campbell reports that the National Audit Office concluded that the
money spent so far by the Department of Energy on renewable energy has been
wasted (Letters, 8 October).
This conclusion is certainly correct. But the reason is not that renewable
resources are uneconomic, but that the Department of Energy is
incompetent.
The Danes have a profitable export trade in wind turbines, as a result of a
very modest amount of government support. Howden, a Glasgow company that
supplied a number of machines for service in California, stopped making them
because, at the time, it got no support from the powers that be in this
country; as a result the machines being installed here are mostly imported.
There is no doubt that before long wind power will be able to compete with
power from other sources.
There is enough power in the waves off the west coasts of Britain and
Ireland to generate one-third of the electrical power used in the British
Isles. But financial support for wave power was cut off long before it could
be possible to know how much it will cost to develop this resource.
In the early 1980s the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board proposed
building the Grudie-Talladale scheme: they consulted the Nature Conservancy
and the local authorities and held a public meeting in a village hall to
consult the local people. In their 1985 annual report they stated that the
scheme was “environmentally acceptable and economically justified”, and by not
allowing them to build it the Secretary of State was “inhibiting them in their
duty to reduce the price of electricity”. The Scottish Nonfossil Fuel
Obligation appears to have been designed to exclude the building of schemes of
this type.
It is tempting to conclude that the government has been trying to discredit
the development of renewable resources by the incompetent allocation of
resources.
Will Campbell please say where are these nuclear power stations that have
been decommissioned (not just fenced off and left), and how much it has
cost.
Fish farm fear
The toxic marine algae Heterosigma akashiwo, which caused the recent farmed
salmon losses in the Bay of Camaret in Brittany (In Brief, 8 October), has
also been a problem for fish farmers in Scotland.
The fish deaths are associated with haemolytic toxins produced by the
rapidophyte H. akashiwo under conditions of nutrient stress, most probably
phosphorus deficiency. The algae are bacteriverous, and may be advantaged in
the competition for phosphate near marine fish farms, where 75 per cent of the
nutrient input is lost to the environment and subject to primary degradation
by bacteria.
H. akashiwo and other toxic microorganisms which cause great losses to the
aquaculture industry may have been introduced to Brittany and Scotland in
cargo ships’ discharged ballast water. Ballast water has been established as
the vector introducing many toxic species elsewhere in the world, causing
enormous loss to aquaculture.
The operation of the proposed superquarries in the Highlands and Islands
would certainly increase such risks, while it is almost certain that claims
for consequential loss would be very difficult to establish, and the shipping
responsible long departed.
Clean cotton
Your article “Cotton without chemicals” (24 September) highlights the many
problems in organic cotton production and rightly points to the past
effectiveness of chemical companies in persuading governments and farmers of
the need for their products in cotton production.
Some of the negative effects of these persuasive efforts on health and the
environment have been documented by organisations participating in the
Pesticide Action Network (PAN), including the Pesticides Trust in the UK.
There is much at stake, and changes to more economically and environmentally
viable systems of production will not happen quickly. But in a cotton project
currently being developed by the trust in collaboration with PAN partners in
developing countries, the indications are that farmers themselves are seeking
opportunities to increase their incomes by turning to organic production
methods and eliminating or reducing the amounts of pesticide they use.
The project seeks to use the newly liberalised trading climate to link
developing country producers with marketing opportunities in Europe to create
a trade channel for organic cotton which will stimulate production. This is
potentially a project in which everybody gains: poor farmers and their
environment in the South, and consumers wanting “cleaner clothes” in the
North.
Dark noises
I do not see why I, a fully self-conscious and wide awake being, who knows
what he is doing and thinking and saying, should take any notice whatsoever of
Guy Claxton and the noises he makes in his darkroom (Review, 1 October), when
on his own admission he is a fully automated product of evolution, whose
genetically programmed bio-computer brain leaves no room for any conscious
entity that knows what it is talking about.
I agree with Claxton’s opposition to a slavish addiction for possessions,
but this is a moral position and his theory allows no morality. He denies the
individual’s freedom to choose, a prerequisite for moral action. For him,
consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon, no more important than Huxley’s “steam
above the factory”.
Drain the decks
Reports on the tragic capsizing of the ro-ro ferry in the Baltic and
previous sinkings emphasise the movement of a “few centimetres” of water on
the car deck as the cause of the catastrophes (Comment, 8 October). The use of
watertight bulk heads on the car deck to control the movement of this water
has been resisted on scheduling grounds by the ferry operators.
Another way of controlling this water would be to make the car deck a grid,
rather than a solid floor, so that any water that got in could drain into a
compartmentalised bilge. This would stop the water surging about the ship
causing instability. Pumps would be needed for each bilge compartment.
The advantages of this proposal are that it may be possible to modify
existing ferries, turnaround times would not be increased and docks need not
be altered.
BST and cancer
Ben Mepham and Paul Schofield are to be commended for their comments on the
hazards of BST milk (Letters, 10 September). However, their flat dismissal of
concerns relating to potential risks of breast cancer, particularly from
consumption of BST milk by infants, reflects surprising unfamiliarity with a
wide range of published scientific evidence.
There are close biological similarities, including an identical amino acid
sequence, between bovine and human IGF-1. IGF-1 is neither inactivated by
digestion nor destroyed by pasteurisation, which actually increases IGF-1
levels by some 70 per cent. Intact proteins, let alone smaller polypeptide
molecules such as IGF-1, are absorbed across the human gut wall, particularly
in infants.
A 1990 Federal Drugs Administration publication, based on unpublished
Monsanto data, revealed that short-term oral administration of IGF-1 to adult
rats induced statistically significant gross growth promotion even at the
lowest level tested, approximately 1/4000th of the positive infusion control
level.
Administration of BST to cows induced a very pronounced uptake of IGF-1 in
mammary epithelial cells. IGF-1 is a potent mitogen [causing cell division]
for cultured human breast epithelial cells. Truncated IGF-1, present at
estimated levels of 3 per cent in BST milk, is an even more potent mammary
mitogen. IGF-1 and related growth factors have been incriminated in promoting
the malignant transformation of normal human breast epithelia. IGF-1 has been
incriminated in maintaining the malignant phenotype of human breast
cancer.
The undifferentiated prenatal and infant human breast is particularly
susceptible to hormonal influences, so that imprinting by IGF-1 may not only
itself constitute a potential breast cancer risk factor, but may also increase
the sensitivity of the breast to subsequent unrelated carcinogenic risk
factors.
Such converging lines of evidence clearly raise unresolved questions on the
role of IGF-1 in BST milk as a potential breast cancer risk factor. Failure to
investigate such concerns, let alone dismissing them, is public health
folly.
Samuel Epstein
University of Illinois Medical
Center Chicago
Asthmatic air
In your editorial “Cars that kill” (1 October) you quote me as claiming
that it would be “quite wrong” to assume that vehicle exhausts or other forms
of outdoor pollution were to blame for Britain’s rising rate of asthma
attacks. This is not a correct reflection of what I said.
The point I made is that in considering the possible causes of the rising
incidence of asthma, outdoor air pollution is important but needs to be kept
in perspective. On the one hand, we accept that high levels of some outdoor
air pollutants may make existing asthmatics worse. But on the other hand, it
is important to remember that there are many other factors involved in causing
asthma, including maternal smoking, indoor air pollutants and dietary factors.
Furthermore, although the emphasis has been on asthma people suffering from
chronic bronchitis and other cardiorespiratory diseases may also be affected
by air pollution.
What is needed is more research to assess the importance of air pollution
on respiratory disease, including asthma, and we have this week announced that
拢5 million is available from the Department of the Environment, the
Department of Health and the Medical Research Council for research into the
effects of air pollutants upon health.