Experts Warn of Deaths Caused by Fuel Billing System

The UK Public Health Association has warned that the UK’s two-tier system for calculating domestic fuel bills could be causing thousands of deaths each year.

According to experts at the UK Public Health Association, Britain’s poorest households are penalised unfairly by the two-tier tariff system that charges the most money for the first units of energy used.

Branding the system “iniquitous”, the public health experts have demanded change – not least because current figures estimate that more than 30,000 people in the UK die each winter because of low temperatures. Most of these deaths are caused by strokes, chest infections and heart attacks.

Professor John Ashton, chairman of the UK Public Health Association, said: “What’s happening in a lot of these houses is that you’ll have an elderly person, perhaps a widow on their own on a low pension, struggling to keep the house warm. She’ll keep one room warm and then at bedtime she’ll go up to her bedroom which is cold. She’ll get chilled and then she’ll get a chest infection, go on to get pneumonia and that’s it.”

Cotton totes need to used 131 times to be `eco-friendly`

They found that cotton bags may cause more global warming, as a greater amount of energy goes into making a cloth carrier than a polythene one.

And that a cotton bag has to be used 131 times before it has the same environmental impact like its plastic counterpart.