February 24, 2005

That Sudan 1 Scare.

As you know, some 20 squillion products are being pulled off the shelves as a result of the Sudan 1 colourant being found in a batch of chili powder. A Place to Stand gives us the calculation of the danger:

How do they determine if a material is carcinogenic. Well basically
they force feed a solid diet of the material to rats for years at about
5,000 times what you & I could manage to eat.

This stuff formed only a part of the chili powder – lets be generous & say 10%.
Worcester sauce is not pure chili powder or anything like it – lets say 1%.
The sauce is only a small taster of most most of these products – I’d say 1% would be high.

So
the amount of this "poison" is 1/5000 X 1/10 X 1/100 X 1/100 = 1 part
in 500 million of what sometimes causes cancer in rats. By the theory
that there is no lower level on poisons that might mean 1 death in 500
million or 1 tenth of person here. In fact that is a rather silly
political theory with no evidence behind it – the older theory is that
"the dose makes the poison" which is fairly obviously true since many
trace elements we need to survive are dangerous in large quantities.

As he points out, believing that there is any serious danger in this particular case is akin to believing in homeopathy. Quite nuts.

Food and Drink

5 responses

dearieme

February 24, 2005

There is a book to be written on the continuing corruption of science: which means, I suppose of scientists, medics etc.

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Quinn

February 25, 2005

Tim, I agree that the reaction to this scare is way over the top; I’ve written pretty much the same myself.
I do however feel a certain sympathy for the Food Standards Agency; they really had little option but to recall all these products. Imagine the furore there would have been if they had done nothing to recall foodstuffs that contain a toxin, no matter how minute the quantity?
My real target is the Media, again, for their absurd blanket coverage. Their sense of priorities is bizarre.

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Andrew Duffin

February 25, 2005

Dearieme: the book’s already been written. Go and have a look at John Brignell’s site.

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Carol

February 27, 2005

I agree with your conclusions Tim. I have been in awe of this scare, in light of the fact that cigarettes (and their relatives) are legal. I suppose the key here is you can only pour carcinogens into yourself as long as you do it on purpose.

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MuffinXL

March 3, 2005

They ought to drop the hammer on all those food dyes. None of them are necessary, and probably a lot of them will be found to be carcinogenic or harmful to a greater or a lesser degree.
C.

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