BRITAIN has long been in need of a strategy to protect and enhance its soil.
Five years ago the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution outlined the sort
of things that should be covered in a report Sustainable Use of Soil.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and the
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) have
quietly鈥攊t seems almost secretly鈥攑lanned the policies and the
programmes to implement them.
Until recently, whenever I met soil scientists they would quiz me on when the
government would publish its soil policy. Now Michael Meacher, the environment
minister, and Elliot Morley, the junior agriculture minister, have published a
consultation paper, The Draft Soil Strategy for England (see
www.detr.gov.uk/consult.htm). Anyone concerned by this vital topic will find the
document worth the effort. I gather that the consultation period will run until
early summer.
An aspect of the report that appeals to me鈥攍iving as I do in a farming
constituency鈥攃oncerns the growing problem of phosphate pollution. It says
that researchers are trying to find ways of reducing the amount of this chemical
entering streams and rivers in agricultural run-off. The ministers say they want
to work with farmers to minimise the regulatory burden, but it is clear that
action will be needed, at least in some areas. There are links between this work
and the control of local erosion. MAFF is funding a research programme to
identify techniques to reduce nutrient loss from agriculture. As results become
available they will be disseminated to farmers and their advisers.
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I trust that the schemes chosen will be funded at a meaningful rate given the
parlous state of many farms in the wake of Britain鈥檚 worst foot and mouth
disaster. We neglect our soils at our peril.
IN recent years much effort has gone into helping people kick the smoking
habit by means of 鈥渟afe鈥� nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products such as
patches, gum and the like. Now Stephen Hecht and a team of researchers at the
University of Minnesota Cancer Center in Minneapolis question just how safe this
is. They claim that no nicotine product designed for long-term use can be considered safe
(快猫短视频, 2 December 2000, p 10).
The Minnesota team analysed the urine not only of smokers but also former
smokers who now use NRT. They found it contained pseudooxynicotine. If that
chemical reacts with sodium nitrite it produces a potent lung
carcinogen鈥攏icotine-derived nitrosamino ketone. I asked junior health
minister Yvette Cooper what the government鈥檚 view is of NRT in the light of
these findings.
Cooper replied that the Department of Health is well aware of Hecht鈥檚
research. Tobacco smoking is the cause of a third of all cancers in Britain. The
DoH views NRT products as offering the most effective way of helping people to
abandon smoking and avoid a life-threatening addiction. NRT provides a far
smaller intake of nicotine than a typical smoker鈥檚 daily intake. And while
treatment courses last only a few weeks, a recalcitrant smoker smokes for an
average of 30 to 40 years, said the minister.
During the passage of the tobacco advertising bill through the Commons in
February, ministers made it clear that the key to the government鈥檚 plans to
reduce death and disease from tobacco dependence is to make NRT products
increasingly available.