Planet Ban-it ten things they’ll outlaw soon
John NaishLondon Telegraph Saturday November 3, 2007
Five years ago, suggesting that a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces could successfully be implemented across Britain with barely a squeak of protest would have sounded fanciful at least. But the ban’s easy passage and its positive early results – such as a 20 per cent fall in heart attacks in Scotland in the ten months since it came into force there – have stirred health campaigners and legislators across the nation. There are so many other dangerous practices that can be curbed, or controlled or deleted from existence. Life, they say, could be made so much safer and healthier with a few more rules.
Not everyone is convinced. Libertarians are ready to defend our right to risk our wellbeing through daft, dangerous, ill-considered or enjoyable activities. They point to the original health Nazi as a salutary lesson: Adolf Hitler never drank alcohol, never smoked and never allowed anyone to smoke in his presence. One of his party slogans instructed the German people: “Your body belongs to the nation! Your body belongs to the Führer! You have the duty to be healthy!”
It’s a safe bet, though, that more new health laws are on the way. The European Union is expected, for example, to act on new research implicating food additives in children’s behavioural disorders. Local authorities and employers have been quietly issuing health-related verbotens, too. And while we’ve been banning smoking, the rest of the world has been implementing a whole range of curbs for us to copy.
To see what’s in store, I’ve switched on the Body&Soul horizon-scanning radar to detect the top ten bans heading our way.
ROADSIDE MEMORIALS
Safety fears have led a growing number of local authorities to clamp down on roadside shrines.
The councils claim that they are acting on advice from police who fear that the tributes could endanger those placing them and distract motorists. Lincolnshire County Council “discourages floral tributes for health and safety reasons” and removes them if left for weeks. Bob Clarke, an East Sussex councillor, says that unauthorised memorials are now taken away.
Already banned in most American states.
JUNK FOOD ADVERTISING
Last April, research linking junk food advertising to teenage obesity led Ofcom, which regulates broadcasters, to outlaw all TV and radio adverts that promote sugary, salty or fatty foods and are targeted at children under 9. At the end of this year the rule will extend to 15-year-olds.
However, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) says that the regulations do not go far enough. It wants marketing of junk food products to children banned completely.
Ian Fannon, of the BHF, says that the foundation is lobbying for Ofcom to introduce a 9pm watershed for junk food TV adverts: “I think there is a good chance that we will succeed. We think we will achieve a total ban incrementally.”
However, an editorial in the advertising industry trade journal Campaign complains that the new Ofcom rules are already a step too far and have starved television of £30 million worth of revenue.
Meanwhile, many snack brands are evading the broadcasting ban by moving their advertising to the internet. Ofcom does not control internet advertising and neither, in effect, does the Advertising Standards Authority. A loophole in its code means that a brand’s own site is considered “editorial” content rather than advertising and is therefore free of any restrictions on targeting children.
This has enabled sites belonging to brands such as Haribo, Magic Kinder and Wrigley Hubba Bubba to feature games and cartoons targeted at children. Skittles, which are made by the confectionery giant Mars, has a profile on the social networking site Bebo. McDonald’s is also targeting children on the internet. It features a Kids Zone on its website, which lets children play games featuring the company’s clown mascot, Ronald McDonald.
Already banned nowhere.
FOOD ADDITIVES AND COLOURINGS
The clamour for a ban on many artificial colours and flavourings has grown louder in response to research in September suggesting that many colours may, in certain combinations, cause hyperactivity in children. Although a ban remains some way off, the Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the Southampton University study, revised its advice to parents of hyperactive kids, suggesting that they try cutting certain artificial colours from their diets. The colours are: sunset yellow (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102) ponceau 4R (E124), and sodium benzoate (E211).
The Southampton study suggests that consuming certain mixtures of these food colours together with the preservative sodium benzoate could be linked to a “negative effect on children’s behaviour”.
Dr Andrew Wadge, the FSA’s chief scientist, says the decision to ban problem additives is down to the European Food Safety Authority, which is reviewing all food colours used in the EU.
Already banned in some European countries that have acted unilaterally. Ponceau 4R and carmoisine are banned in Norway, Sweden, Japan and the US.
TEENAGE TANNING
People under 18 are to be banned from using tanning machines in Scotland, under legislation proposed by Ken Macintosh, a Member of the Scottish Parliament. The new Scottish administration has agreed to adopt the ban as part of the public heath Bill published this month. There will also be a ban on coin-operated, unsupervised sunbeds and health warnings on all machines. “These will be much like the health warnings on cigarette packets,” says Macintosh, “So it’s about raising the awareness of the dangers, as well as stopping use by young people.”
An estimated 100 people die in Scotland each year of skin cancers caused by the use of sunbeds. Macintosh hopes that the ban, which is “emphatically supported” by the British Medical Association in Scotland, will become law early next year. How long before it heads south?
Already banned in Australia, where a law passed in 2002 bars under15s from solariums unless they have parental consent. California barred under14s from tanning in 2004 and is debating raising the limit to 18.
MULTIPLE DOG-WALKING
Wandsworth Council, southwest London, has identified a vicious new threat to our wellbeing in the shape of professional dog-walkers parading packs of pooches belonging to owners who are too busy to exercise their pets. Big packs, on or off the leash, are banned for fear of fights and bites. Walking more than eight dogs is illegal in Wandsworth, and if you walk more than four mutts, you will need a special licence. A four-dogs maximum has been introduced in London’s royal parks, including Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’s Park.
Already banned in Raleigh, North Carolina, which bars town dwellers from owning more than two dogs.
TRANS FATS
Trans fats (or hydrogenated fats) have often been used in fried foods, snacks and baked goods to extend their shelf life, but since highly publicised research revealed that they are about ten times worse for heart health than unsaturated fats, many manufacturers have removed them from their branded products.
The Health Secretary Alan Johnson said this month that trans fats could be banned under forthcoming regulations. But Oliver Tickell, a health campaigner who has spent the past three years running tfX, the UK campaign against trans fats in food, says that recent voluntary restrictions by bulk industrial suppliers of vegetable oil may have effectively banished the fats from most British plates.
He reports how the suppliers told a meeting at the Food Standards Agency this week that there may be only 26 “problem” foods left being sold in the UK, down from 6,000 a year ago. By next year, Britain may be entirely trans-fat free, the suppliers claim.
British MEPs such as Linda McAvan (Yorkshire and the Humber) have lobbied for the fats to be banned outright, though any action by the European Parliament may now be left lagging behind the suppliers’ self-imposed ban.
A number of MEPs have signed a declaration in the European Parliament merely calling for clear labelling on any foods that may contain the fats.
Already banned in Denmark, where any food containing more than 2 per cent trans fats is outlawed.
COATS, CHOIRS, FLOWERS, SHOES AND MOBILE PHONES
Doctors’ white coats are to be banned from hospital wards after January, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson has announced. The garments, along with neckties, jewellery and watches, fake nails and long sleeves, have fallen victim to concerns about drug-resistant “superbugs” such as MRSA and C. difficile. But Johnson’s ban is only the latest in a trend to forbid potentially contagious items from wards.
Choristers, for example: last December, Torbay Hospital barred the Torbay Gospelaires male voice choir from entering wards to sing jolly Christmas carols. After 40 years of carolling to patients, the choir has been told that it can sing in public areas, but can’t cross ward thresholds to cheer the bedridden.
Flowers, meanwhile, are increasingly being banned from hospital wards across the land.
Again, this is over fears that they can spread infections such as MRSA and Staphylococcus aureus. Managers say that bugs can develop in vase water.
Then there are trendy Crocs shoes, which have reportedly been banished from the feet of nurses by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust, because of health and safety fears. Doctors’ mobile phones and pagers may also be for the chop. A recent study in the Journal of Hospital Infection found that more than 80 per cent of mobiles and 70 per cent of pagers had keypads that were contaminated with the bacteria.
Already banned in Sweden, where hospitals forbid Croc-wearing, claiming that the shoes create static electricity, which interferes with medical equipment.
ALCOHOL ADVERTISING
No more “Follow the bear”? The Royal College of Physicians is joining a phalanx of campaigning groups, including Alcohol Concern, to create the Alcohol Health Alliance to campaign for an immediate 9pm watershed on television alcohol advertising. But Professor Ian Gilmore, the college’s president, says the ultimate goal is a complete ban on TV booze ads.
Professor Gilmore began his campaign this year, after figures revealed that deaths from drink have doubled in 15 years. “I find it bizarre that, amid an epidemic of alcohol-related harm, we are still advertising it at times when children can be influenced,” he says. “Alcoholic beverages are advertised in cinemas when films with a 12 certificate are being shown.”
The Alcohol Health Alliance aims to lobby parliamentary groups to introduce advertising bans, and already the Liberal Democrat MP Sandra Gidley has introduced a Private Members’ Bill calling for laws to regulate price promotions on alcoholic products and to ban drinks advertising on TV before the 9pm watershed.
Already banned in France, where TV advertising of alcohol, and sponsorship of companies for advertising purposes by alcohol brands, is forbidden. In Lithuania, advertising alcohol is illegal between 6am and 11pm.
LUNCHTIME DRINKING
A survey by the law firm Browne Jacobson claims that 57 per cent of businesses ban drinking altogether during working hours, including lunchtime. The figure was 40 per cent ten years ago. Brighton and Hove City Council introduced a complete drinking ban on its 8,000 employees during working hours in 2005. The Welsh Assembly is planning a lunchtime booze ban for its 5,500 staff. The ban won’t apply to assembly members, though.
Already banned at the headquarters of the giant Belgian brewer InBev.
COFFIN-CARRYING
Family pallbearing is on the endangered list. In June, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council banned mourners from carrying the coffins “to the grave, as well as the lowering of the coffin into the grave”. It says the job should be left to the professionals. The council’s officers instigated the ban after a number of “near misses” and says it is only fulfilling its duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Already banned in Ireland. Fingal County Council, which runs 32 cemeteries in North Dublin, banished pallbearing amateurs after a number of people sued the local authority over graveside accidents.
John NaishLondon Telegraph Saturday November 3, 2007
Five years ago, suggesting that a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces could successfully be implemented across Britain with barely a squeak of protest would have sounded fanciful at least. But the ban’s easy passage and its positive early results – such as a 20 per cent fall in heart attacks in Scotland in the ten months since it came into force there – have stirred health campaigners and legislators across the nation. There are so many other dangerous practices that can be curbed, or controlled or deleted from existence. Life, they say, could be made so much safer and healthier with a few more rules.
Not everyone is convinced. Libertarians are ready to defend our right to risk our wellbeing through daft, dangerous, ill-considered or enjoyable activities. They point to the original health Nazi as a salutary lesson: Adolf Hitler never drank alcohol, never smoked and never allowed anyone to smoke in his presence. One of his party slogans instructed the German people: “Your body belongs to the nation! Your body belongs to the Führer! You have the duty to be healthy!”
It’s a safe bet, though, that more new health laws are on the way. The European Union is expected, for example, to act on new research implicating food additives in children’s behavioural disorders. Local authorities and employers have been quietly issuing health-related verbotens, too. And while we’ve been banning smoking, the rest of the world has been implementing a whole range of curbs for us to copy.
To see what’s in store, I’ve switched on the Body&Soul horizon-scanning radar to detect the top ten bans heading our way.
ROADSIDE MEMORIALS
Safety fears have led a growing number of local authorities to clamp down on roadside shrines.
The councils claim that they are acting on advice from police who fear that the tributes could endanger those placing them and distract motorists. Lincolnshire County Council “discourages floral tributes for health and safety reasons” and removes them if left for weeks. Bob Clarke, an East Sussex councillor, says that unauthorised memorials are now taken away.
Already banned in most American states.
JUNK FOOD ADVERTISING
Last April, research linking junk food advertising to teenage obesity led Ofcom, which regulates broadcasters, to outlaw all TV and radio adverts that promote sugary, salty or fatty foods and are targeted at children under 9. At the end of this year the rule will extend to 15-year-olds.
However, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) says that the regulations do not go far enough. It wants marketing of junk food products to children banned completely.
Ian Fannon, of the BHF, says that the foundation is lobbying for Ofcom to introduce a 9pm watershed for junk food TV adverts: “I think there is a good chance that we will succeed. We think we will achieve a total ban incrementally.”
However, an editorial in the advertising industry trade journal Campaign complains that the new Ofcom rules are already a step too far and have starved television of £30 million worth of revenue.
Meanwhile, many snack brands are evading the broadcasting ban by moving their advertising to the internet. Ofcom does not control internet advertising and neither, in effect, does the Advertising Standards Authority. A loophole in its code means that a brand’s own site is considered “editorial” content rather than advertising and is therefore free of any restrictions on targeting children.
This has enabled sites belonging to brands such as Haribo, Magic Kinder and Wrigley Hubba Bubba to feature games and cartoons targeted at children. Skittles, which are made by the confectionery giant Mars, has a profile on the social networking site Bebo. McDonald’s is also targeting children on the internet. It features a Kids Zone on its website, which lets children play games featuring the company’s clown mascot, Ronald McDonald.
Already banned nowhere.
FOOD ADDITIVES AND COLOURINGS
The clamour for a ban on many artificial colours and flavourings has grown louder in response to research in September suggesting that many colours may, in certain combinations, cause hyperactivity in children. Although a ban remains some way off, the Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the Southampton University study, revised its advice to parents of hyperactive kids, suggesting that they try cutting certain artificial colours from their diets. The colours are: sunset yellow (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102) ponceau 4R (E124), and sodium benzoate (E211).
The Southampton study suggests that consuming certain mixtures of these food colours together with the preservative sodium benzoate could be linked to a “negative effect on children’s behaviour”.
Dr Andrew Wadge, the FSA’s chief scientist, says the decision to ban problem additives is down to the European Food Safety Authority, which is reviewing all food colours used in the EU.
Already banned in some European countries that have acted unilaterally. Ponceau 4R and carmoisine are banned in Norway, Sweden, Japan and the US.
TEENAGE TANNING
People under 18 are to be banned from using tanning machines in Scotland, under legislation proposed by Ken Macintosh, a Member of the Scottish Parliament. The new Scottish administration has agreed to adopt the ban as part of the public heath Bill published this month. There will also be a ban on coin-operated, unsupervised sunbeds and health warnings on all machines. “These will be much like the health warnings on cigarette packets,” says Macintosh, “So it’s about raising the awareness of the dangers, as well as stopping use by young people.”
An estimated 100 people die in Scotland each year of skin cancers caused by the use of sunbeds. Macintosh hopes that the ban, which is “emphatically supported” by the British Medical Association in Scotland, will become law early next year. How long before it heads south?
Already banned in Australia, where a law passed in 2002 bars under15s from solariums unless they have parental consent. California barred under14s from tanning in 2004 and is debating raising the limit to 18.
MULTIPLE DOG-WALKING
Wandsworth Council, southwest London, has identified a vicious new threat to our wellbeing in the shape of professional dog-walkers parading packs of pooches belonging to owners who are too busy to exercise their pets. Big packs, on or off the leash, are banned for fear of fights and bites. Walking more than eight dogs is illegal in Wandsworth, and if you walk more than four mutts, you will need a special licence. A four-dogs maximum has been introduced in London’s royal parks, including Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’s Park.
Already banned in Raleigh, North Carolina, which bars town dwellers from owning more than two dogs.
TRANS FATS
Trans fats (or hydrogenated fats) have often been used in fried foods, snacks and baked goods to extend their shelf life, but since highly publicised research revealed that they are about ten times worse for heart health than unsaturated fats, many manufacturers have removed them from their branded products.
The Health Secretary Alan Johnson said this month that trans fats could be banned under forthcoming regulations. But Oliver Tickell, a health campaigner who has spent the past three years running tfX, the UK campaign against trans fats in food, says that recent voluntary restrictions by bulk industrial suppliers of vegetable oil may have effectively banished the fats from most British plates.
He reports how the suppliers told a meeting at the Food Standards Agency this week that there may be only 26 “problem” foods left being sold in the UK, down from 6,000 a year ago. By next year, Britain may be entirely trans-fat free, the suppliers claim.
British MEPs such as Linda McAvan (Yorkshire and the Humber) have lobbied for the fats to be banned outright, though any action by the European Parliament may now be left lagging behind the suppliers’ self-imposed ban.
A number of MEPs have signed a declaration in the European Parliament merely calling for clear labelling on any foods that may contain the fats.
Already banned in Denmark, where any food containing more than 2 per cent trans fats is outlawed.
COATS, CHOIRS, FLOWERS, SHOES AND MOBILE PHONES
Doctors’ white coats are to be banned from hospital wards after January, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson has announced. The garments, along with neckties, jewellery and watches, fake nails and long sleeves, have fallen victim to concerns about drug-resistant “superbugs” such as MRSA and C. difficile. But Johnson’s ban is only the latest in a trend to forbid potentially contagious items from wards.
Choristers, for example: last December, Torbay Hospital barred the Torbay Gospelaires male voice choir from entering wards to sing jolly Christmas carols. After 40 years of carolling to patients, the choir has been told that it can sing in public areas, but can’t cross ward thresholds to cheer the bedridden.
Flowers, meanwhile, are increasingly being banned from hospital wards across the land.
Again, this is over fears that they can spread infections such as MRSA and Staphylococcus aureus. Managers say that bugs can develop in vase water.
Then there are trendy Crocs shoes, which have reportedly been banished from the feet of nurses by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust, because of health and safety fears. Doctors’ mobile phones and pagers may also be for the chop. A recent study in the Journal of Hospital Infection found that more than 80 per cent of mobiles and 70 per cent of pagers had keypads that were contaminated with the bacteria.
Already banned in Sweden, where hospitals forbid Croc-wearing, claiming that the shoes create static electricity, which interferes with medical equipment.
ALCOHOL ADVERTISING
No more “Follow the bear”? The Royal College of Physicians is joining a phalanx of campaigning groups, including Alcohol Concern, to create the Alcohol Health Alliance to campaign for an immediate 9pm watershed on television alcohol advertising. But Professor Ian Gilmore, the college’s president, says the ultimate goal is a complete ban on TV booze ads.
Professor Gilmore began his campaign this year, after figures revealed that deaths from drink have doubled in 15 years. “I find it bizarre that, amid an epidemic of alcohol-related harm, we are still advertising it at times when children can be influenced,” he says. “Alcoholic beverages are advertised in cinemas when films with a 12 certificate are being shown.”
The Alcohol Health Alliance aims to lobby parliamentary groups to introduce advertising bans, and already the Liberal Democrat MP Sandra Gidley has introduced a Private Members’ Bill calling for laws to regulate price promotions on alcoholic products and to ban drinks advertising on TV before the 9pm watershed.
Already banned in France, where TV advertising of alcohol, and sponsorship of companies for advertising purposes by alcohol brands, is forbidden. In Lithuania, advertising alcohol is illegal between 6am and 11pm.
LUNCHTIME DRINKING
A survey by the law firm Browne Jacobson claims that 57 per cent of businesses ban drinking altogether during working hours, including lunchtime. The figure was 40 per cent ten years ago. Brighton and Hove City Council introduced a complete drinking ban on its 8,000 employees during working hours in 2005. The Welsh Assembly is planning a lunchtime booze ban for its 5,500 staff. The ban won’t apply to assembly members, though.
Already banned at the headquarters of the giant Belgian brewer InBev.
COFFIN-CARRYING
Family pallbearing is on the endangered list. In June, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council banned mourners from carrying the coffins “to the grave, as well as the lowering of the coffin into the grave”. It says the job should be left to the professionals. The council’s officers instigated the ban after a number of “near misses” and says it is only fulfilling its duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Already banned in Ireland. Fingal County Council, which runs 32 cemeteries in North Dublin, banished pallbearing amateurs after a number of people sued the local authority over graveside accidents.
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