Improving the effectiveness of pregnancy warning labels displayed on alcohol containers: a French eye-tracking study.

OBJECTIVES: Every year, foetal alcohol spectrum disorders impact 1 in 100 live births in France. France is one of the few countries with mandated labelling that must include a pregnancy warning. However, as the regulation passed with minimal specifications regarding the size and colour of the ensuing pictogram, the current pregnancy warning labels (PWLs) is often barely visible. This study investigated the potential influence of the PWL design on women's attention and alcohol product choice. STUDY DESIGN: The study used a within-subject experiment, with participants exposed to four PWL conditions. METHODS: An eye-tracking method was adopted. Eye movement was used as a proxy for measuring visual attention. In total, 4752 observations were collected (99 participants × 48 wine bottles) among women of childbearing age. RESULTS: The results show that almost none of the participants paid attention to the current French PWL. However, the findings also indicate that a larger colourful PWL, with a combined text and pictogram, attracts far more attention, and that participants chose the bottles of wine displaying this type of PWL less frequently. CONCLUSIONS: The study indicates that the current French PWL is insufficient to draw women's attention and suggests improvements to the PWL design to help increase its effectiveness.

Tobacco sales to underage buyers in France: findings from a mystery shopping study.

OBJECTIVES: In 2017, one in four French 17-year-olds was a daily smoker, even though France prohibited the sale of tobacco to under-18 minors in 2009. This research aims to evaluate the retail violation rate for sale to minors (RVRms) and the associated factors. STUDY DESIGN: The study design used is observational mystery shopping study. METHODS: We conducted a mystery shopping study enlisting 12-year-old and 17-year-old youths in a representative sample of 527 tobacco outlets during three weeks in spring 2019. Multinomial Logit and Probit regressions were estimated on the data collected. RESULTS: The law is not respected. Two of three sellers (65.2%) were willing to make an illegal sale to a 17-year-old minor, and almost one in 12 (8.1%) were willing to sell to a 12-year-old child attempting to buy tobacco. Illegal sales were more likely to be made by male sellers, retailing in big cities, when there were no in-shop queues, and to 17-year-old females. The absence of the mandatory enforcement poster flagging up the ban on the sale of tobacco to minors appears to be a strong factor associated with RVRm. CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that progress needs to be made to better enforce tobacco control legislation to help decrease underage smoking in France. Rate of compliance with the law could be improved by stronger enforcement measures and tougher sanctions, but also by training and the provision of age-verification tools for sellers, as demonstrated by experiments in other countries.

Dissuasive cigarettes: which cues are the most effective at deterring young people from smoking?

OBJECTIVES: To counter the attractiveness of cigarettes, Article 11 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control provides for the possibility of including warnings on cigarettes. The objective of our research was to explore perceptions of cigarettes designed to be dissuasive (displaying the warning 'Smoking kills' in uppercase or lowercase, a 'skull and crossbones' pictogram, unattractive shades of brown or dark green or a combination of all these negative cues). STUDY DESIGN: In-depth interviews were conducted with 31 people in France aged 15-25 years (10 daily smokers, 10 occasional smokers and 11 non-smokers; 15 females and 16 males). METHODS: Participants were shown different dissuasive cigarettes (displaying the warning 'Smoking kills', a 'skull and crossbones' pictogram, unattractive shades of brown or dark green or a combination of all three) and current branded ones. Open-ended questions were asked about the attractiveness of the cigarettes, perception of risk, the image of the smoker and influence on the desire to quit or not to start. Discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed. RESULTS: The different dissuasive cues were found to increase negative health perceptions (e.g., increase risk), reduce positive smoker image and the perceived pleasure of smoking (e.g., embarrassment of smoking in front of friends), decrease the desire to start smoking and increase the desire to quit. The most dissuasive cigarette was an unattractively dark-coloured cigarette which displayed both the warning 'Smoking kills' and a 'skull and crossbones' pictogram. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of the appearance of cigarettes and suggests that dissuasive cigarettes may be an innovative tobacco control measure for governments.

Determination of radium-226 in aqueous solutions by alpha-spectrometry.

The new European legislation imposes a lower threshold for radioactivity in drinking water. This requires the development of more sensitive and reliable analytical methods. This work presents an improved alpha-spectrometric technique to determine the radium-226 activity in aqueous solution relying on the radium adsorption onto a thin manganese oxide layer followed by alpha-measurement. The preparation of the MnO2 deposit has been optimized as well as the radium adsorption conditions. Detection threshold and limit of 5 and 10 mBq x L(-1), respectively, with a 10% (95% confidence) uncertainty are currently reached. This paper reports on the overall technique and on its application to assess the radium-226 activity in 28 French mineral waters. In addition, the gross alpha- and beta-activities have been evaluated using proportional counting while the uranium concentrations were derived from ICPMS.