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** 25 July 2024
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** UK
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** Vapes in schools: The scale of the issue revealed with kids as young as five vaping (#1)
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** ‘We’re going to see a death’ - stark warning as vapes spiked with Spice in England's schools (#2)
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** Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests (#3)
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** ULEZ expansion led to significant drop in air pollutants in London, report finds (#4)
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** International
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** Italy: This plodding robot sucks up cigarette butts (#5)
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** UK
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** Vapes in schools: The scale of the issue revealed with kids as young as five vaping

Thousands of teachers from across England are warning that vaping in schools is causing widespread issues with children's behaviour and health.

Teaching union NASUWT commissioned a survey of 4,000 teachers - and more than 85% of them warned vaping on school premises is causing problems.

Across the country, teachers raised their concerns about the impact it was having on their education and the concerning behaviour they were seeing attached to the habit.

NASUWT has shared data from the South West exclusively with ITV West Country. Almost 84% of those surveyed in the South West said vaping is an issue in their school.

Teachers also spoke of it being commonplace for students to miss lessons so they can go to the toilet to vape, with some pupils lying that they feel sick to get out of class.

Some teaching staff also reported having to confiscate vapes from children as young as five.

Vaping in lessons was described as a "huge problem" by many of the teachers surveyed, with them also warning pupils were regularly vaping on school buses, at bus stops and in corridors.

Teachers say they are also having to spend more time policing vape use - including searching school bags on trips.

Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary of NASUWT, said: “More than eight in ten teachers have told us that vaping is a problem in their schools.

"We want to see the new Government act to protect children and young people from the dangers of vaping and we welcome the proposed Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

"Vaping amongst young people has become a public health emergency.

"These products are highly accessible, affordable and marketed in ways which make then attractive and appealing to children.

"Pupils leaving lessons in order to vape is not only damaging their education but also their health.

"We will also be pressing the Government to ban all sales of disposable vapes as part of measures to protect children’s health."

Source: ITV X, 24 July 2024

See also: ASH – New figures show youth vaping has plateaued while adult vaping is at an all-time high ([link removed])
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** ‘We’re going to see a death’ - stark warning as vapes spiked with Spice in England's schools

An expert has warned young people could die this summer holiday because their vapes have been laced with Spice.

Professor Chris Pudney, a Professor of Applied Biochemistry at the University of Bath, has been testing vapes taken from young people across the country.

He warned it is now a “struggle” to find a school in England where vapes containing Spice were not present, claiming it was almost “endemic” and saying we needed to start “being honest about it”.

Some schools the Professor visited reported children collapsing, some with suspected Spice-induced cardiac arrests, after smoking vapes.

Other headteachers reported “children vomiting on themselves in assembly” and others being “completely out of it”.

Professor Pudney has sampled devices from 30 schools in England and found Spice present in vapes taken from 25 of those schools.

In total he has analysed 536 vapes since Easter this year and found 11% contained Spice and 1.5% had THC in them.

Professor Pudney said that he is concerned some children are now reliant on the drug and as a result a young person could die during the school holidays, while others could experience nasty withdrawal symptoms while not at school.

According to his research, in most cases vapes containing Spice were refillable vapes and very rarely the single-use branded vapes.

He thinks children are coming into possession of Spice vapes as they instead think they’re smoking THC - the element in cannabis which produces the ‘high’ - and are purchasing the devices as ‘cannabis’ vapes.

But THC has a very low risk profile and very rarely results in fatal overdoses. Spice on the other hand is incredibly potent and can cause sinister side effects.

Addressing parents he said: “If you suspect your kids are vaping something that gives some effect to them it's very unlikely to be THC or cannabis, which is a very low risk drug.

“It's vastly more likely to be Spice… if you're seeing [your child] behave strangely you need to have an open conversation with them about the risk.”

Source: ITV X, 24 July 2024
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** Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests

For the regular boozer it is a source of great comfort: the fat pile of studies that say a daily tipple is better for a longer life than avoiding alcohol completely.

But a new analysis challenges the thinking and blames the rosy message on flawed research that compares drinkers with people who are sick and sober.

Scientists in Canada delved into 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and how long they lived. In most cases, they found that drinkers were compared with people who abstained or consumed very little alcohol, without taking into account that some had cut down or quit through ill health.

The finding means that amid the abstainers and occasional drinkers are a significant number of sick people, bringing the group’s average health down, and making light to moderate drinkers look better off in comparison.

“It’s been a propaganda coup for the alcohol industry to propose that moderate use of their product lengthens people’s lives,” said Dr Tim Stockwell, first author on the study and a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.

“The idea has impacted national drinking guidelines, estimates of alcohol’s burden of disease worldwide and has been an impediment to effective policymaking on alcohol and public health,” he added. Details are published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Many studies on the health impact of alcohol show a J-curve effect, where death rates are lowest among those who drink a little. When the Canadian team combined the data from the studies in their analysis, it suggested that light to moderate drinkers – those having between one drink a week and two a day – had a 14% lower risk of dying over the study period compared with abstainers.

But the apparent benefit evaporated on closer inspection. In the highest-quality studies, which included younger people and made sure that former drinkers and occasional drinkers were not considered abstainers, there was no evidence that light to moderate drinkers lived longer. That was only seen in the weaker research that failed to separate former drinkers and lifelong teetotallers.

“Estimates of the health benefits from alcohol have been exaggerated while its harms have been underestimated in most previous studies,” Stockwell said.

“The great majority of previous studies compare drinkers with an increasingly unhealthy group of people who currently abstain or drink very little. We know people give up or cut down on drinking when they become unwell and frailer with age. The most biased studies included many people who had stopped or cut down their drinking for health reasons in the comparison group so making people well enough to continue drinking appear even healthier,” he added.

Source: The Guardian, 25 July 2024

See also: Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs - Why Do Only Some Cohort Studies Find Health Benefits From Low-Volume Alcohol Use? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Study Characteristics That May Bias Mortality Risk Estimates ([link removed])
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** ULEZ expansion led to significant drop in air pollutants in London, report finds

Levels of harmful air pollutants have dropped significantly since the ultra-low emission zone was enlarged to cover Greater London last year, according to a report from city hall.

Analysis covering the first six months since the ULEZ expansion found that total emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from cars across London were 13% lower than projected had the scheme remained confined to inner London, while NOx from vans was 7% lower.

Levels of particulate pollution in the form of PM2.5 exhaust emissions from cars in outer London are an estimated 22% lower than without the expansion.

The total change was equivalent to removing 200,000 cars from the road for one year, the report said.

London’s air quality was continuing to improve at a faster rate than the rest of England, with the capital’s pollution rapidly approaching levels seen across the country, it found.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, extended Ulez from the inner London boroughs across the whole of London in August 2023.

The most polluting cars must normally pay a £12.50 charge each day they are driven in the capital. Only a minority of cars on the road are affected, with most petrol cars under 19 years old and diesel cars under nine years old exempt.

The proportion of non-compliant vehicles entering the expanded ULEZ halved to less than 4% in February, compared with more than 8% detected on London’s roads last June. About 90,000 fewer non-compliant vehicles were detected daily on average each day in the zone.

City hall said the improvements in air quality had exceeded the targets it had set in its consultation before the policy was implemented last year.

Khan said: “Today’s report shows that the ULEZ is working even better than expected. The expansion to outer London is already having a significant effect – driving down levels of pollution, taking old polluting cars off our roads and bringing cleaner air to millions more Londoners.

“We are now set to get London’s air to within legal limits by 2025, 184 years earlier than previously projected.”

Source: The Guardian, 25 July 2024
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** International
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** Italy: This plodding robot sucks up cigarette butts

Of the six million cigarettes annually smoked around the world, people toss an estimated 4 trillion butts somewhere other than ashtrays and trash bins. Given both their size and their general uncleanliness, the vast majority of the butts remain where they land. But even with most of its tobacco long gone, each remnant can contaminate the surrounding space with over 700 toxic chemicals.

Short for “Vacuum-cleaner Equipped Robot,” VERO includes what is by now a ubiquitous four-legged bot design (in this case, Unitree’s commercially available AlienGo unit) but with one important accessory—a vacuum worn like a backpack and paired with a nozzle for each foot. Created by roboticists at ITT’s Dynamic Legged Systems division, every vacuum tube on VERO is capped with a custom, 3D-printed nozzle to ensure it can get as close to the ground as possible without impairing its mobility.

Providing VERO with a vacuum upgrade is one thing, but training the robot to use it effectively is another problem entirely. In a paper published in April the Journal of Field Robotics, researchers describe first developing a neural network capable of interpreting visual data from VERO’s onboard cameras. As IEEE Spectrum explained on July 18, this system needed to be sensitive enough to pinpoint the trash amid cluttered environments, but also discerning enough to ignore any scanned duplicate targets. Once it identifies a cigarette butt, VERO then must calculate the best manoeuvres to place one of its nozzle feet within suction distance while balancing itself using its other three limbs. Unlike many wheeled robots, VERO is intended to handle uneven terrain, stairs, and other similar obstacles, so it also must weigh the possibility of tipping over against how to properly suck up its cigarette butts.

According to its designers, VERO eventually managed a nearly 90 percent accuracy rate across multiple environment scenarios.

Source: Popular Science, 22 July 2024
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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