Health and Medicine – Page 52

Red car crash

Numerous visitors to the Sciencebase site seem to arrive from the search engines using the phrase “red car crash”. I am not sure I had any specific content among the 4000 articles posted here since 1995 that would be useful to them and I am not entirely sure what they are hoping to find with that search. I suspect they’re perhaps musing on the risks associated with driving a red car as opposed to a car of any other colour.

MidJourney AI generated image of a red car crash

The #DeceivedWisdom suggests that red cars are somehow safer to drive because we associate red with danger and other road users are warier of cars of that hue. Conversely, red is often a popular colour for high-performance vehicles and muscle cars with greater acceleration capabilities than lesser cars and so perhaps they are actually less safe to drive because they spend more of their time accelerating rapidly and being driven at higher speeds.

Search engines suggest that their users might be looking to answer any one of the following questions when searching for red car crash:

Which Colour car has most accidents?
Are red cars more likely to crash?
What was the worst UK road accident?
What is the safest color?

However, some studies have shown that you are more likely to be involved in a crash if you’re in a black car, rather than a red one, other studies found the opposite and that 60 percent of road traffic accidents (RTAs) involve a red car. Yet another study suggests that white cars are 12 percent less likely to be involved in an RTA than black cars, others suggest yellow is slightly safer than white. Given the almost random nature of the studies cited by the search engines in offering these so-called facts, I think we need a solid study to tell us once and for all whether a red car crash is more common than any other. This study goes some way to offering an insight, but considers the colour of the car of the driver who was not to blame for the car crash.

Importantly, driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, distractions such as using a mobile phone, aggressive driving, and driving at a higher speed than is appropriate for the road conditions will most likely outweigh any consideration regarding the colour of one’s car.

Alternative Germans

A federal health report by the Robert-Koch-Institute in Berlin, Germany, has revealed that three quarters of Germans use, or have used, complementary medicine and so-called alternative remedies and 90% would recommend such treatments to others. Since 1995, health insurance companies in Germany have had discretion in including or excluding complementary medicine from the treatments they cover. A lack of definitive medical research could be said to assist the companies in reaching their decisions over certain treatments. Stats source: BMJ.

Cancer mismatch

UK scientists believe a map of how cancer research funding is distributed might help streamline the R&D process and spot underfunding in particular areas. The National Cancer Research Institute has produced the first map of its kind to analyze the distribution of some $390m of cancer research funding from charities and government in the UK. The map revealed that most of the money is spent on the biggest cancers but some rare disorders are being funded disproportionately. (Brit Med Journal)

Nothing new under the sun

For those who think the revelation that carcinogens are formed in the nonenzymic browning reaction known as the Maillard reaction is something new, take a look at the following item by David Bradley from a 1990 issue of New Scientist. Science: Cooking up carcinogens – The chemicals generated in our food, New Scientist vol 127 issue 1729 – 11 August 1990).

Chemical reactions that take place during cooking, baking and preserving generate products that are very important in giving different foods their distinctive aromas and colour. Recently, researchers have discovered that many of these products can reduce the food’s nutritional value, and some can actually be poisonous.

Franze Ledl of Stuttgart University and Erwin Schleicher of the academic hospital Munich-Schwabing in West Germany have studied many of the reactions involved, which are known collectively as the Maillard reaction. They believe that the reaction products could cause some diseases, including certain forms of cancer (Angewandte Chemie, International Edition in English, 1990, vol 29, p 565). If you are an NS subscriber you can read David Bradley’s article in the archive. It seems that the potential for carcinogens, such as acrylamide.

Keeping chicken under wraps

A ton of chicken salad was recalled for destruction by the US Department of Agriculture at the beginning of August, because batches were found to be contaminated with the potentially fatal microbe Listeria monocytogenes. The latest development in food science could keep such ready meals on the menu by blocking and killing the bacterium before it can contaminate the food.

Cling film (clingwrap) made from protein rather than plastic could help make outdoor parties and buffet lunches a much safer mealtime. A thin layer of this engineered protein protects those marinated chicken wings and other ready-to-eat meats by stopping those tummy bug microbes in their tracks, according to US researchers.

Food scientists Marlene Janes of Louisiana State University and Mike Johnson of the University of Arkansas have designed and synthesised an entirely edible film from two protein-based substances, which they say can prevent the food poisoning microbe Listeria monocytogenes on ready-to-eat chicken. The team has tested the protein film and reckon they can keep bacterial counts below detectable levels for almost a month.

“Food production occurs in several stages, each of which provides potential opportunities for bacterial contamination,” explains Johnson. He points out that generally chickens grown for commercial food production live in crowded conditions that are ideal for the spread of bacteria. While thorough cooking will kill most pathogenic bacteria that worm their way around food industry safety measures pre-cooked foods can easily be contaminated between cooking and final packaging steps.

Stick that ready-to-eat meal in the fridge and leave well alone and you provide a breeding ground for listeria, which can then cross-contaminate other foods in the chiller, such as deli meats and hot dogs. The perfect recipe for a disastrous barbecue, in other words. Listeria poses a particular risk to children, the elderly, and pregnant women, and can cause serious illness and even be life threatening.

Johnson and Janes (now at Louisiana State University) have explored the protective ability of a protein substance called zein, blended with nisin, a natural preservative protein that kills bacteria. They tested the effects of the protein film on chicken breasts from their local supermarket. First, they trimmed off the skin and cut them into five-gram pieces. They froze the pieces and then blasted them with radiation to eliminate any spoilage bacteria found on the chicken.

They then cooked the chicken pieces (without sauce or condiment) and cooled them. They then marinated the cooked chicken in a listeria brew and coated it with the zein-nisin film and put into sterile sample bags in the fridge.

Usually chilling food in the fridge will be enough to prevent bacteria from multiplying too rapidly. But, that is not the case with listeria, which positively thrives in the cold. Leave that cooked chicken at room temperature or uncovered in the fridge overnight and it could be seriously contaminated by the time you’re lighting the barbecue the next day. Just one mouthful could make someone ill.

The Arkansas team carried out a bacterial headcount on their chicken pieces after 4, 8, 16 and 24 days. They found that even after 24 days in the fridge the treated chunks of chicken were free from live listeria. The blended protein film, which Johnson says is perfectly harmless to humans, kills listeria stone dead.

For Johnson and other food scientists, food safety is a matter of minimizing risks as much as possible, risks that will never completely go away. Pathogenic bacteria, he says, are tiny but formidable adversaries. There were some 65,209 food-poisoning cases in the UK not picked up while abroad in 2000. The Food Standards Agency wants to take Salmonella, E. coli O157, and Listeria monocytogenes off the menu wherever possible. Johnson told us that, “The zein-nisin coating will only work when cold refrigeration temperatures of 4 Celsius are used and only low numbers of the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes are encountered, say about 1,000 per gram. This strategy will not work for temperature-abused foods left out at room temperature.” Now, where’s that tarragon and lemon dressing?

SOURCE: Journal of Food Science.

Stable bonded oxygen

Have you heard of stable bonded oxygen molecules? No? Neither had we until an associate showed us an advert for Aerobic Oxygen.

Apparently, this wonderful stuff can treat multiple sclerosis, asthma, malaria, Parkinson’s disease, cancers, ME, flu, eczema and many other disorders. So claim the manufacturers in their marketing spiel.

The molecules in Aerobic Oxygen ‘will not release themselves until the body has need for them, therefore they travel through the body in a stable form.’ Aside from the obvious pseudoscience and the large drop of snake oil, we wonder why anyone would buy the stuff when there is so much stable bonded oxygen all around us – just enough in each breath to fulfill the body’s needs, in fact.

Weirdly, on the next page of the magazine carrying the advert, we were startled to find another, this time, marketing a product for improving eye health. The Visionace nutrient capsules from Vitabiotics apparently ‘help maintain healthy eyes and vision’ and the ‘formula’ includes ‘important antioxidant nutrients like ”natural” carotenoids, vitamin C and bioflavonoids in common with lots of other health supplements.

We began to imagine the consequences of matter colliding with antimatter, and wondered what terrible health effects might befall any one taking Aerobic Oxygen at the same time as these antioxidant capsules. Perhaps they would simply cancel each other out in a flash of the credit card. Now, take a deep breath, count to ten…and relax.

Athletic footsy

A friend of mine changed gyms recently – price hike at the old one – and had been for a couple of workouts and a swim & sauna when he noticed a nasty itching between his toes and that the skin was peeling and inflamed looking.

He guessed it was athlete’s foot and booked an appointment to see the doc. By the time he got to see him, my friend’s feet had gone from bad to worse. The toes were a mess and there were blisters all over the tops of his feet. The doc said it was the worst case of athlete’s foot he’d seen and stuck him on an antifungal and antibiotics to clear it up.

Thankfully, it seems to be going, but it’s left him wondering whether he should have stuck with the old gym. Could it have been a sweaty session in the sauna that did it? Don’t they disinfect these places? Apparently, athlete’s foot is on the up and poor sanitation in health clubs is partly to blame. Still, best foot forward, eh?

Monthly pumping crisis

Despite living on the edge of the fens the house of a friend of ours is slightly “downhill” of the main sewer pipe at the end of the road. Consequently, the house relies on a powerful electric pump-house to assist in the removal of soil water.

At least once a month, however, our friend has to alert the water authorities to another pump failure. They duly send a team of experts to hammer the right valves and kick the starter motor etc.

Recently, our friend cornered one of these “engineers” as he was applying steel toecap to a particularly heavy duty metal casement and asked what he thought the recurrent problem might be. “Sanitary towels”, was his succinct reply qualified with, “‘specially them with wings, they float like fish, see?” “The other thing,” he added “is bloody recycled toilet paper, it just don’t break up the way the old stuff used to.” My friend left the engineer to his unenviable task and went away a little the wiser as to the cause of the periodic effluent disturbances, as well as wondering about the environmental benefits of recycled toilet tissue.

Clams on Prozac

The sex connection with oysters (I don’t mean sex with them, obviously, but that they’re supposed to be an aphrodisiac) is obvious but what about clams on Prozac?

A US biologist claimed to have discovered that the anti-depressant can help improve the sex lives of shellfish. According to Peter Fong of Gettysberg College he found that the drug stimulates freshwater fingernail clams and zebra mussels to spawn, which could be useful for clam and mussel farmers. A clue as to why lies in the effects of Prozac on raising serotonin levels – the compound not only affects human mental happiness but is the trigger for spawning in these creatures.

Fong added mysteriously that rarely has either animal been observed to spawn in the wild or in the laboratory without the use of an artificial chemical aid. I was puzzled then as to how these aquatic creatures managed to reproduce successfully for millions of years before the invention of Prozac.

Guilty privates

There’s an army barracks attached to a local village that allows the public to use its heated outdoor swimming pool in the summer. I often assumed it was too much chlorine that was the problem with stinging eyes.

But, according to chemist Howard Gosling that typical swimming pool smell actually comes from compounds known as chloramines that form when chlorine reacts with any urine or sweat in the water. Nice. It’s the chloramines not the chlorine that make your eyes sting.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about why the army pool brings tears to the eyes. Maybe the CO should drop in some of that chemical that turns the water blue of there are any guilty privates swimming.