Sadly, tragic news has emerged that a man in the United Kingdom recently died from caffeine overdose. John Jackson was 40 years old. What makes this unfortunate death worrying is that it was due to consumption…
- Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology, Adelaide University
Last week saw CleanUp 2013, a worthy conference on environmental remediation hosted by the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment. However, in amongst the media releases on…
You may have noticed our Prime Minister Tony Abbott riding around in cycling kit with the Amgen logo across his chest, back and legs. Amgen is the principal sponsor of an Australian fundraising cycling…
It hasn’t been a very inspiring election from the point of view of research. Research hasn’t really featured at all. That slightly changed today with a front page article in the Advertiser (also in The…
Crystal meth has at least two faces, in common with those people unfortunate enough to succumb to its charms, as these horrific before-and-after pics show. I’d like to look at the drug chemically, to shine…
The list of charges by the AFL against the Essendon Football Club for its alleged supplements program makes for compelling reading. Early on in the Essendon charge sheet is this paragraph, which sets the…
Dioxin. That word conjures up images of Seveso, Yusho and Agent Orange. Catastrophic exposure to dioxin has resulted in a range of long term health issues and death from cancer. Dioxin is not a desired…
On Saturday July 20, at 7:27 am AEST, 6:57 am ACST and 5:27 an AWST, (that’s July 19, 21:27 UT), the space probe Cassini will look back to Earth and take a picture of our planet. It will be a pale dot…
American sprinter Tyson Gay and former 100m world record-holder Jamaican Asafa Powell are reported to be among six athletes to test positive for a banned substance: oxilofrine. But what is this drug that…
While I have been distracted with other things, there have been a number of internet articles relating to toxicology that have come and gone, but are still interesting to talk about. There was an article…
I used to have in my lab a small jar of substance with this warning on the label: “Known to the State of California to cause cancer, handle with eye protection, gloves and respiratory apparatus” The identity…
Two Fridays ago* I was interviewed on ABC radio about an article on the health effects of coffee that has been doing the rounds. The theme of the interview was how can ordinary people make sense of conflicting…
On the morning of May 10, there will be an annular Solar eclipse. In an annular eclipse the Moon does not completely cover the Sun, and the Sun forms a thin ring around the Moon at maximum eclipse depth…
World Homoeopathy Awareness Week has just passed (10 April to 16 April), but I would still like to take this opportunity to make people aware that Homoeopathy is expensive placebo that has been failing…
Ever since a year-long investigation by the Australian Crime Commission alleged “widespread use” of drugs in sport we’ve been hearing about a dizzying array of substances allegedly used by elite athletes…
It’s very hard to miss that a certain Famous Sports Person has been accused of taking performance enhancing drugs (and is vigorously denying the accusation), splashed as it is throughout all the news media…
This being Easter and all I thought I would revisit a subject dear to all our hearts, chocolate. Or rather, that part of chocolate that we have a love hate relationship with, caffeine. Have you ever wondered…
Silvery, ductile, malleable and so very, very useful, aluminium is the most common metal in the Earth’s crust. But despite its importance (or perhaps because of it), there are fears that this metal causes…
“Bisphenol A protects against Wheezing” screamed no headline ever, yet that is one of the findings of a paper just published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical immunology. I’m sorry, I really was going…
I’m going to take a break from my planned blogging of the WHO Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Report to talk about this paper “Bisphenol A delays the perinatal chloride shift in cortical neurons by epigenetic…
A new study that found the common plastic ingredient bisphenol A (BPA) may harm a baby’s brain development in-utero has been described as ‘misleading’ and ‘not relevant’ by Australian experts. BPA is a…
Yesterday the World Health Organisation released a report entitled “State of the science of endocrine disrupting chemicals - 2012” Endocrine disrupting chemicals are a broad range of substances that can…
The discovery that certain overseas processed meat products contained, Quelle Horreur, meat that was not exactly the promised beef has generated a fair degree of shock and outrage. There’s a number of…
This weekend the asteroid 2012 DA14 will zoom across our skies, just below the geostationary satellite orbits. While Australians are fortunate in that they have a chance to view this otherworldly rock…
This Australia Day, you might be feeling a little nervous as you slap your slightly carbonised sausages or lamb chops on a melamine plate if you have read news coverage of research just published in the…
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