Concern is expressed about 2 recent decisions on protective additives to flour and drinking water in the British Isles. The first, a joint proposal by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Department of Health, stated that the fortification and restoration of flour with certain minerals (iron and calcium) and vitamins (thiamin and nicotinic acid) would no longer be compulsory. The second was a recent court ruling in Scotland (also the topic of a pending test case in England) that it was beyond the power of a local authority to add fluorine to the water supply. The potential danger to human health in these 2 instances is discussed in light of recent findings. (wz)

The use of food quotients (FQ) calculated from dietary records is proposed for predicting respiratory quotients (RQ) that are needed for calculating free-living energy expenditure determined by the doubly-labeled water method which predicts respiratory CO2 production. This approach is based on the fact that, over the relatively long periods of double-isotope measurements (10-20 days), FQ (which can be obtained from a single 4-day measurement of dietary composition) must equal RQ in subjects in energy balance. It is shown that FQ can easily be adjusted to account for anabolism or catabolism for subjects not in energy balance. Typical RQ values are reported for various population sub-groups residing in the United Kingdom (omnivorous adults, vegetarians, vegans, Asian immigrants, and weaned and breast- and bottle-fed infants).(wz)

The paper aims to understand the impacts of the spatial and temporal diffusion of Anaerobic Digestion (AD) on the Water Energy Food (WEF) nexus and to quantify the associated environmental, social and economic benefits. Contemporary tight carbon reduction targets urge the need to deploy renewable energy technologies however due to interdependencies across the WEF nexus, various technologies are beneficial for some but not all sectors. This paper quantifies the impacts of future possible AD technology diffusion choices on the environment, society and economy. This can aid decision makers to identify the potential consequences of various AD alternatives within the next three decades. The study considers an integrated WEF nexus approach and accounts for the interdependencies within the nexus. This was done by developing an Agent-Based Model (ABM) and simulating the relations between the main players within the nexus, thus examining the upscaling of AD diffusion and its consequences for water consumption, energy production, transportation, landfill use, food waste processing and digestate generation. Three future WEF nexus scenarios, that reflect potential alternatives of society and technology in Great Britain up to 2050, were utilised by the ABM implementation to test the sensitivity of AD diffusion choices. These scenarios describe possible changes to lifestyle, governance, technologies, climate, and social structures. Accounting for the uncertainty associated with such future simulations, the Monte Carlo method was employed to estimate the potential variations in scenario outputs. Results suggest that decentralisation results in the largest carbon reduction, but can incur more costs. Centralisation consumes 35% more water but produces 37% more energy (biogas). The paper has visualised the scenario outputs graphically to highlight the consequences of neglecting the inter-relationships between environmental, social and economic aspects of AD.

Many tonnes of compost are generated per year due to door step composting of both garden and kitchen waste. Whilst there are commercial outlets for the finer grade of compost (<10mm) in plant nurseries, there is little demand for the coarser material (>25mm). This paper reports part of a WRAP-sponsored (Waste Resources Action Programme) study which investigated the potential for green (GC) and mixed green and food (MC) composts to be incorporated into Sustainable Drainage (SUDS) devices such as swales, and replace the topsoil (TS) onto which turf is laid or grass seed distributed. However, it is not known whether compost can replace TS in terms of pollutant remediation, both the trapping of polluted particulates and in dealing with hydrocarbons such as oil, but also from a biofilm development and activity perspective. Using laboratory based experiments utilising leaching columns and an investigation of microbiological development in the composts studied, it was found that many of the differences in performance between MC and GC were insignificant, whilst both composts performed better in terms of pollutant retention than TS. Mixed compost in particular could be used in devices where there may be oil spillages, such as the lorry park of a Motorway Service Area due to its efficiency in degrading oil. Samples of GC and MC were found to contain many of the bacteria and fungi necessary for an active and efficient biofilm which would be an argument in their favour for replacement of TS and incorporation in swales.