Scaremongers

Everyone knows that astronomy grew out of astrology. Both can trace their origins back to the same place, even though they don’t have much to do with one another nowadays. It is often thought, even by some chemists, that chemistry has a similar relationship with alchemy. It sounds plausible, but in fact modern chemistry developed

Anyone can develop an allergy to anything anytime.  Allergic reactions vary in severity, but in rare cases some can kill you.  So when you make it to your bed tonight you can thank providence for sparing you for one more day.

The UK television series QI delights in exposing facts you have always believed as being untrue.  And very entertaining it is.  If they are reading this, here is another one for them.  Which country first used gas in the First World War?  I was absolutely convinced it was the Germans.  But it turns out that

It is often said that 60% of what we apply to our skin is absorbed. The true figure is far lower.

I was very heartened by the common sense responses of the commentators on this story from the Daily Mail, sent to me by my sister. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2009890/Is-shampoo-making-fat-The-chemical-calories-common-beauty-products-affecting-weight.html Some stories are so obviously bogus you need no specialist knowledge whatever to see that they are nonsense .  The only question is why the editors at the Mail

I was procrastinating like a particularly easily distracted loris with ADD fitting in a nifty bit of networking between urgent tasks today, when out of the blue I was asked a question on Twitter about whether cosmetics contained gluten.

I didn’t think that this was possible.  Reading Lisa Lise’s blog the other day lowered my opinion of the Skin Deep database.  Given I that I regard it as highly misleading and often wrong, this is quite an achievement.  But even I thought that the materials that they have set up their database to malign

Last year I picked up on a story about alleged poor water quality in the United States.  This centred around a report about hexavalent chromium levels in tap water.  I wasn’t particularly impressed when I saw how low the figures being quoted were.  But I did point out that there might be an issue because

Since I was a teenager in the Seventies, I’ve always regarded myself as pretty green. Green in the environmental sense that is.