Rumor 1 :Food without food additives is safer
/✗:Not completely true.
Food additives are artificial or natural substances added to food to improve its color, aroma, and taste, as well as to meet the needs of preservation, freshness retention, and processing techniques.
In fact, whether to add food additives is determined by the nature of the food and the production process.
For foods with high protein content, a certain amount of preservatives must be added to ensure food quality and safety; otherwise, they are prone to spoilage. This is a complex issue, where an additive that is non-toxic in food A may be strictly prohibited in food B.
Therefore, the safety of food cannot be solely judged by whether it contains food additives. The safe use of food additives, with compliant types and appropriate quantities, can guarantee food safety. In contrast, foods without food additives have a shorter shelf life and are highly susceptible to spoilage.
We should clarify the relationship between food additives and food safety and not be blindly deceived by rumors.
Rumor 2 :There is a widespread belief that living near electrical substations is dangerous and requires relocation.
/✗:This is a wrong statement
There is no need to panic if there is a substation near your home. Firstly, the location of a substation is determined based on users’ electricity consumption and the planning and construction of the power sector. Substations have a certain coverage area, known as the power supply radius, and beyond this radius, effective power supply cannot be guaranteed.
Therefore, the construction of substations within cities cannot be arbitrarily far from users, and it is normal for them to be built near residential areas.
Secondly, although substations generate electromagnetic radiation and noise, the electric energy frequency of substations is 50 Hz, which is extremely low in the field of electromagnetic radiation and has a very small radiation range.
Therefore, even for staff who work on long-term shifts in substations, as long as they are beyond the safety distance stipulated by the national regulations, the electromagnetic radiation from the substation is less than that of mobile phones that people carry with them, so it does not affect health.
As for noise, national regulations stipulate that the noise level outside the safety distance of all substations in urban areas should not exceed 55 decibels during the daytime (equivalent to the sound of normal conversation) and 45 decibels at night (similar to the level of whispering), thus not affecting people’s daily lives.
Rumor 3 :The larger the mosquito bite bump, the stronger the toxicity of the mosquito
/✗:This is a wrong statement
The size of a mosquito bite bump varies among individuals and is unrelated to the toxicity of the mosquito. When mosquitoes suck blood, they insert their piercing-sucking mouthparts into human skin. Their saliva contains various chemicals that inhibit vasoconstriction, blood coagulation, and platelet aggregation. These mosquito “saliva” injected into the human body can cause a local allergic reaction, leading to the accumulation of immune cells and resulting in itchiness and local inflammatory responses.
Due to differences in the strength of each individual’s immune system response, reactions to mosquito bites vary. Some people have almost no reaction, but most people will develop red spots, papules, wheals, and itchiness on their skin after being bitten by mosquitoes. For individuals with allergic constitutions, the skin around the bite site may release a large amount of cytokines, causing exaggerated reactions such as blisters, plaques, ecchymoses, swelling, and pain, which may persist for an extended period before resolving.
Furthermore, when mosquitoes bite certain special parts of the human body (such as the eyelids and lips), significant swelling, known as angioedema, is more likely to occur due to the abundance of loose connective tissue in these areas.
