Food additives 'could be as damaging as lead in petrol'

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Food additives 'could be as damaging as lead in petrol'

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health-news/ food-additives- could-be- as-damaging- as-lead-in- petrol-804890.

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(http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/food-a

dditives-could-be-as-damaging-as-lead-in-petrol-804890.html)

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Saturday, 5 April 2008

 

Artificial food colours are set to be removed from hundreds of products

after a team of university researchers warned they were doing as much damage to

children's brains as lead in petrol.

 

Academics at Southampton University, who carried out an official study into

seven additives for the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said children's

intelligence was being significantly damaged by E-numbers. After receiving the

advice

last month, officials at the FSA have advised their directors to call for

the food industry to remove six additives named in the study by the end of next

year.

 

The advice, which will be put before the FSA board next week, would be

voluntary. However, manufacturers would be expected by the regulator to remove

the

additives, replacing them with natural alternatives if possible. Some

sweetmakers have unilaterally agreed to remove the suspect colours following

the

latest scientific evidence.

 

Researchers have linked E-numbers to behavioural problems since the 1970s

but the debate has intensified after the Southampton study, published last

September, found that seven additives such as sunset yellow (E110) and

tartrazine

(E102) were causing temper tantrums among normal children.

 

The FSA, which funded the £750,000 study, was criticised by health groups

for failing to ban the additives after taking the advice of the Committee on

Toxicology, which said they had only a moderate effect on some children.

 

Instead, the FSA said it would work with manufacturers to see if they would

remove the additives and awaited an assessment of its research by the

European Food Safety Agency (Efsa).

 

While conceding there was " limited " evidence that the additives caused the

children problems, Efsa decided the study was not a good enough reason to

change the safe limits of the E-numbers.

 

Apparently stung by the failure to act, Professor Jim Stevenson, who led the

Southampton study, wrote to the FSA demanding immediate action.

 

His letter dated 20 March is included in the bundle of documents forwarded

to the board, which were published yesterday.

 

In an 18-page rebuttal of criticism of his study, Professor Stevenson and

three colleagues wrote: " The position in relation to AFCs [Artificial Food

Colours] is analogous to the state of knowledge about lead and IQ that was

being

evaluated in the early 1980s ... Needleman [a researcher] found the

difference in IQ between high and low lead groups was 5.5 IQ points ... This is

very

close to the sizes obtained in our study of food additives. "

 

Politicians finally phased out leaded petrol from all petrol stations in

2000, almost two decades after researchers warned that the toxin was stunting

the development of young brains.

 

Professor Stevenson's team warned: " We would argue that the findings from

our own study and the previous research overviewed by the Efsa would lead to

the same conclusion as was reached by Professor Sir Michael Rutter in relation

to lead in 1983. Namely that for food colours there is 'justification for

action now'. "

 

They advised that there be more research on a seventh additive they studied,

the preservative sodium benzoate, which stops mould growing in fizzy drinks

such as Diet Coke.

 

The FSA's board, which meets on Thursday, will make a recommendation to

ministers on what to do about additives.

 

Officials have warned that some products such as mushy peas, tinned

strawberries and Battenberg cake might not be able to be reformulated in time

and

might have to be withdrawn from the shelves.

 

* A list of more than 900 products containing the additives is published on

the Food Commission's website _http://actiononadditives.com/_

(http://actiononadditives.com/)