Category: Health

  • “If electromagnetic waves can penetrate walls, just imagine what they can do to your skin!”

    Various lifestyle mags (GQ and some women’s ones) are running tech-related bullshit from Clarins: artificial electromagnetic waves make your skin go all bobbly or something, and you need to spend your cash on expensive beauty products. Now! – Magnetic Defence Complex protects skin from the ageing effects of Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. – Clarins Anti-Pollution Complex…

  • What next? “Remember to breathe”?

    The Scottish Executive’s latest wheeze: spending a couple of million quid on this campaign. [photopress:press3.jpg,full,pp_image]

  • Mobile phone study proves that phone radiation eats your brain

    Only joking: still no evidence of any harmful effects. The study looked at 400,000 people, many of whom have been using mobiles since 1984, and it included both analogue and digital handsets. As The Register notes: the study found that long-term mobile phone users had a slightly lower incidence of cancer than the general population,…

  • “Mast killers – do you live near a deadly mast?”

    The headline comes from yesterday’s News of the World which, along with various other Sundays, decided to scare its readers about mobile phone masts. The story begins: SIX neighbours from the same floor of a block of flats have all been hit by cancer after two phone masts were installed on the building now dubbed…

  • Oh shit, not again

    Those of you who’ve been hanging around these parts for a while will know of the Big Back Saga, where I slipped two discs, spent months in agony (even though I was off my face on horse tranquilisers) and ended up paying for very expensive surgery in order to get my life back. What a…

  • Two UK schools ban wi-fi due to witchcraft fears

    OK, maybe not witchcraft. But the decision isn’t based on anything sensible, either. Via The Inquirer: The Prebendal School in Chichester and a Welsh comprehensive, Ysgol Pantycelen, have pulled the plug on their wireless networks after parents lobbied about potential effects wi-fi could have on their kids. As the Inquirer rightly notes, there is no…

  • More bans

    Junk food ad crackdown announced Junk food ads during TV programmes targeted at under-16s will be banned, under rules put forward by regulators. Ofcom says these foods include any that are high in fat, salt and sugar. There will be a total ban on ads during children’s programmes and on children’s channels, as well as…

  • US city bans smoking – everywhere

    Via MetaFilter: Belmont is set to make history by becoming the first city in the nation to ban smoking on its streets and almost everywhere else. The Belmont City Council voted unanimously last night to pursue a strict law that will prohibit smoking anywhere in the city except for single-family detached residences. Smoking on the…

  • I hate to say I told you so…

    Remember the various chats we had about the smoking ban, and my worries that it would encourage even more daft ideas? Here’s the latest one. A GOVERNMENT adviser has called for junk food to be banned in public places to tackle Scotland’s obesity epidemic. Professor Annie Anderson, director of the Centre for Public Health Nutrition…

  • Daily Mail “could cause cancer”, warns expert

    Reading the Daily Mail could cause every conceivable kind of cancer, and massively increases the risk of breast cancer, experts fear. While other newspapers are also dangerous, the middle-market tabloid is particularly dangerous for women. The new study, published in the journal Bigmouth Strikes Again, found a horrifying gap in current research. “We’ve looked at…