Drink up, light up, call the Pope... Cancer's coming

A new study reveals regularly drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice could lead to skin cancer. Photo / File

Life just got a little bleaker with the news fresh orange juice may cause cancer. First, we had to come to terms with the fact that things we knew deep-down weren't very good for us - notably alcohol and smoking - could cause cancer. Next, that stigma was attached to things we suspected weren't good for us - sugar, for instance.

Then we found things we'd grown up consuming and assumed were at least health-neutral - like red meat - had been added to the blacklist. And we've all had the disconcerting experience of being told, often by someone who read it in Reader's Digest, that something we take for granted and consume as a matter of course - salt comes to mind - can cause cancer.

Now a study by US researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island has revealed regularly drinking fresh orange juice or eating grapefruit increases the likelihood of developing skin cancer.

This takes health consciousness, and its twitchy alter ego anxiety, into new and uncharted territory: we're now being told something we've always believed was good for us may in fact be the opposite.

Fresh orange juice isn't just a beverage, it's a symbol of healthy living. Think of those aspirational, glossy magazine images of young, perfectly formed, obviously wildly successful couples in white bathrobes having breakfast by the pool or on their yacht: they're always drinking orange juice.

So where does it end? Perhaps it never will. The website Numberwatch has compiled what it describes as "the complete list of things that give you cancer, according to epidemiologists". It's a sobering read which brings to mind that stark reminder from the Order for the Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer: "In the midst of life we are in death."

Did you know brooms can cause cancer? According to Britain's Health and Safety Executive, sweeping up wood chips can, over the long term, cause nose cancer. Or candles, like fresh orange juice a staple of the wellbeing industry's iconography? Studies have shown that fumes from paraffin wax candles, the sort you bring out for a romantic dinner or deploy around the bathroom to enhance the ambience when you feel like a long soak in the bathtub, can cause lung cancer.

Researchers in Iran have found that steaming hot black tea, a drink we associate with wizened yet twinkle-eyed peasants who still herd goats and chop firewood in their 90s, can cause oesophageal cancer.

And here's a poison pill for Catholics: the Pope causes cancer. In 2010 an Italian specialist told a court there was a demonstrable link between leukaemia and lymphoma in children in the Cesano area north of Rome and exposure to "Vatican radio structures" beaming the Pontiff's messages to the faithful.

Here are some other things on the numberwatch list that may surprise you: abortion, bus stations, (low) cholesterol, deodorants, ethnic beliefs, fillings, gingerbread, high bone mass, incense, jewellery, kissing, left-handedness, microwave ovens, not having a twin, ozone (and ozone depletion), pet birds, railway sleepers, sunscreen, toothpaste, underarm shaving, vitamins, wallpaper and x-rays.

The good news, such as it is, is that there doesn't appear to be anything beginning with Q, Y or Z that can give you cancer. But as the folks at Numberwatch would no doubt advise, watch this space.

Haddin's pre-Ashes burn a fizzer

Am I the only person astounded by the reaction to Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's "We are not New Zealand" statement in the build-up to the Ashes series now underway in the UK?

Of course, Haddin is the Aussie we particularly love to hate following his boorishness in the World Cup final, but the outcry - a local news website wondered if he's "the worst-spirited cricketer ever" - seemed excessive and missing the point.

Given the difficulties, beginning with near-identical flags, of explaining to foreigners that New Zealand is not an extension of Australia but a separate and distinct entity, we should be grateful for assistance from across the Tasman. Haddin's declaration will be appreciated by young Kiwis on their OE in the UK who have to put up with the Brits automatically assuming they're Aussies.

Our media leapt to the conclusion Haddin was sledging us, again. I believe he's acutely aware of the landmark decision by the Macclesfield Magistrates Court in 2012 that calling a New Zealander an Australian constitutes racial abuse.