IF you and your family are taking long walks in the countryside this summer, avoid bracken at all costs. It could quite literally kill you. Bracken, the pretty green fern that blankets the land in many areas, contains carcinogenic chemicals related to benzene. It may be enough just to breathe the bracken spores in order to be affected.
Bracken causing cancer? It sounds bizarre. Yet the danger is so serious that a distinguished group of British doctors and scientists has got together to form the Bracken Advisory Commission in an attempt to persuade the British government and the EU to do something about it.
Bracken, the committee claims, is "extremely poisonous to wildlife, livestock and humans. It has the capacity to kill animals which eat it, and poses a serious threat to people who walk in it. Literally thousands of people, many with their children and pets, could be put at risk of contracting serious illnesses."
Bracken's cancer causing chemicals components enter our bodies in two ways. When we walk near bracken, we breathe in the spores. When bracken grows near a water supply, its poisonous substances leech into the water. And when cows eat bracken, these chemicals end up in their milk.