Don’t trust your Christmas tree

Ah yes, the merry tree. No living room should be without one. Unless you listen to American researchers, who report that allergic symptoms rise sharply in some asthmatic people when there is a live Christmas tree in the house.

A study by Dr John Santilli, of St Vincent’s Medical Centre, Connecticut, says that the level of mould spores in a typical home climbs sharply during the weeks that a real Christmas tree is put up. Up to one in six of us has an allergy to the spores, he told the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology recently. “Our patients consistently have a dramatic increase in asthma and sinus complaints in winter and this is especially pronounced during the Christmas season,” he says. The longer the tree is in the house, the higher the level of spores.

Getting an artificial tree may not necessarily prove healthier, though. A study in the Journal of Environmental Health, by the UNC-Asheville Environmental Quality Institute, in North Carolina, says that trees with PVC leaves may present a “substantial” risk to children because the plastic often incorporates lead as as a stabliliser.

Research shows that even low levels of lead contamination through eating can harm young brains. It’s not just the trees: the lights can also harbour dangerous lead levels, says a study this month by America’s Quantex Laboratories (though maybe there’s a more immediate danger involved with kids chewing electric lights). And if there’s a way that small children can find to injure themselves with a tree, they’ll find it. Australian doctors at Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital, in Perth, report in Paediatric Anaesthesia how they had operated on a two-year-old boy who had spent the past 15 months suffering hoarseness and noisy breathing. A bronchoscopy recovered a small, plastic Christmas tree embedded in his chest wall.

In fact, innocent-looking Christmas trees account for more than 1,000 injuries each year, according to the UK Government’s Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance Statistics for 2002 (the last year they were collected). The toll includes eye-pokes from branches and falls from chairs while sticking the fairy on its perch. Tree lights are responsible for more than 350 other injuries. But it doesn’t even have to be your own tree: last year an unnamed woman pushing a pram suffered head injuries and a broken collar-bone after being struck by a falling pine that was part of the council Christmas decorations in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.

In similar fashion, a British tourist sustained a broken leg and injuries to his spine and chest when a 23m-high tree fell on top of him at a Christmas market in the centre of Prague in December 2003.

Beware of corks, crackers and coins

Trees aren’t the only seasonal threat, though. Because the festive season is a rare opportunity for people to gather and spend time relaxing, drinking and playing with toys at home, there’s bound to be the odd domestic mishap. That’s why staff at accident and emergency units across the country are bracing themselves. Mike McCabe, an A&E consultant at Swansea NHS Trust, says that Christmas Day patients include people who have injured their arms pulling crackers, revellers with party-popper or champagne-cork eye injuries and children who have fallen off new skateboards, skates or bikes. He says putting £1 coins in Christmas puddings as lucky prizes is a worrying trend because of their size: “We have had people who have swallowed them, clogging X-ray departments. There’s not much we can do except let nature take its course.”

Stay out of the shops

Christmas shopping can cause an injury crisis, too, according to the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. It warns that every year, millions of harried shoppers risk their backs by buying all the presents, decorations and food in one go. People struggling with up to six heavy bags are simply asking to get hurt, say the physios, who report seeing a substantial increase in shopping-related spinal damage.

“Many of us are not used to manual labour and lead sedentary lifestyles, so carrying multiple bags each containing goods up to 5kg (11 lb) will be hard work,” the society cautions. “It’s not just the weight, it’s the distances we walk with the bags. We are risking strains to the neck, back and shoulders.”

Happy new . . . aagh!

Still more serious is the annual outbreak of Christmas coronaries and happy-new-year heart attacks. A national database of 53 million deaths in America between 1973 and 2001 shows deaths peak during December and January, with spikes on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Dr Keith Churchwell, the associate director of the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute, says that people with cardiac symptoms often don’t bother to see their doctor if there are celebrations looming.

“They do so because of obligations at home, not wanting to spoil the holiday fun and not wanting to deal with the possibility of going to hospital over the festive period,” he says. People also think it’s safe to take a holiday from their health regimen, they consume artery-busting levels of salt-laden food and heart-stopping amounts of alcohol, and they forget to take their heart medicines, Churchwell adds.

Have a care in the car

Don’t even think about jumping in the car to get away from it all. Aside from drunk drivers, the RAC has given warning of a further hazard on the road – rowing families. The motoring organisation’s psychologists have claimed that car drivers are suffering a “deadly new syndrome”, festive auto disorder (FAD). Symptoms include extreme irritability and volatile disagreements among car occupants suffering a variety of “stress points” connected with Christmas.

“Simmering discontent between family members in the close confines of festive homes can boil over at the slightest provocation once they get behind the wheel,” claims Conrad King, a psychologist who maintains that precisely 56 per cent of in-car arguments are caused by bad map-reading or getting lost. Backseat driving and unruly passengers are the next two most common causes of family fallouts, he says. “It is an important road-safety issue.”

He adds: “People might also be aware of SAD [seasonal affective disorder caused by lack of sunlight]. A combination of FAD and SAD could ruin anyone’s Christmas.”

Be chary of the church

It’s enough to make someone seek sanctuary in that traditional home of Christmas spirit, the Church. But not so fast now. Bernard Hudson, the head of microbiology and infectious diseases at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, has warned the city’s Anglicans to beware of poisoned chalices. An investigation by the doctor, reported in The Medical Post, dispels the notion that the wine in the Midnight Mass chalice, which symbolises Christ’s blood, kills any infection. And, he adds: “It is not true that wiping the Communion cup reduces the amount of infectious agent present to a level lower than the infectious dose.” Hudson has told the Church it could be held liable if a parishioner contracts a disease such as the cold sore virus or meningococcal septicaemia from sharing saliva. He says, too, that dispensing bread with unwashed hands could spread diarrhoea.

If the Communion wine does not get you, perhaps the incense will. Scientists from Maastricht University found that burning incense can release potentially carcinogenic particles. Church air was found to be considerably higher in carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons than air beside roads travelled by 45,000 vehicles daily. The air in one basilica after a simulated Mass also had levels of solid pollutants (PM10s) that were up to 20 times the European limits. Tiny PM10 particles can be inhaled and are therefore a potential hazard, says the report in the European Respiratory Journal.

The scientists also found high levels of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and some unknown types of free radicals released from burning incense and candles. Free-radical atoms can precipitate cancer tumours and trigger or exacerbate inflammatory reactions such as asthma and chronic bronchitis, their report says.

But hey, it’s probably nothing to worry about. Instead, we should all take a deep breath and (accidents, allergies, injury, infection and death notwithstanding) wish ourselves a merry, merry time. Ho, ho ho.

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