Only one out of the nine examined insect repellents which were approved by the government contained the effective ingredient diethyltoluamide (DEET), the Consumers Foundation said yesterday.
The remaining eight contained what the foundation called “natural” or “non-toxic” ingredients — including essential oils of eucalyptus, lavender, fish geranium, cinnamon, mint, cedarwood and pomelo — which need more research to prove their effectiveness in repelling insects.
The foundation said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued legal permits to 15 insect repellent products, classified as “instructed medicine” containing DEET, adding that currently there are only five of these products in the market, and that consumers should look for the drug license number printed on the packages.
National Taipei University of Education’s Program of Environmental Education and Resources professor Huang Chi-sen (黃基森) said products with natural ingredients need scientific research to back up their claims of effectiveness, but government authorities have not yet established a standardized testing method.
The foundation said a Consumer Protection Committee meeting next week is to determine which government department should monitor insect repellent products.
Huang urged the government to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of more insect repellent ingredients so that consumers would have a greater number of choices and feel confident when selecting such products.
The foundation said consumers can look for insect repellent products with a DEET content of more than 10 percent for better effectiveness, but below 10 percent if used on children and infants under 2 months old. Pregnant women should avoid using products containing DEET, the foundation said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching