Sunday, August 23, 2009

BBC Hyperbolic Headlines - now they tell us candles cause cancer

Do you know, you can name anything that's remotely pleasant in life and somebody is bound to come along at some point and say that it's somehow dangerous, or bad for you.

Today the humble candle comes under the spotlight, not for anything to do with fire, but, apparently, if you breathe in too many of their fumes, they might give you Cancer and Asthma. Like walking down a busy road, which most of us do every day, won't.

I have a hunch that if you locked yourself in an unventilated room lit only by hundreds of candles for days on end, then I guess it might not be good for you, but any one of us could have worked that out.

I doubt that a candlelit dinner, such as the one I have planned for our 21st wedding anniversary this week, or the occasional candlelit bath is going to do anyone any harm.

The BBC really ought to know better - this is yet another example of where their headline is way out of proportion to the rest of the story.

5 comments:

Stuart Winton said...

Caron, I think you've hyperbolised(?) the BBC's headline yourself - they say:

"Candle use linked to cancer risk"

You say:

"Candles cause cancer"

Your headline seems a lot more alarming than the BBC's ;0)

Unknown said...

The point is that the BBC's headline does not match the substance of the story.

At least you can tell that I'm not saying that from my headline:-)

Jo Hayes said...

It's not the candles, it's the smoke. Which is not really news at all, is it?

Stuart Winton said...

But your headline doesn't match the substance of the BBC's headline ;0)

Unknown said...

Stuart, we could probably argue about this all day - it was a bit of Sunday morning fun and I think we both have a point:-)

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