SCOTTISH farmed salmon is so dangerous that if you eat more than one meal of it every two months you are increasing your risk of cancer.

So lethal is it that US scientists recommend that girls and women of childbearing age avoid it altogether for fear of birth defects and brain damage to their unborn children.

The scientists examined two tonnes of fish in which they found a few nanogrammes of carcinogenic chemicals, including polycholorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

"There are a variety of health effects, particularly in relation to PCBs," said US toxicologist Dr Jeffrey Foran. "They include reproductive and developmental effects. There are also neurological, brain function effects and immune system effects."

PCBs - which from the early 1930s until they were banned in the 1970s were used in electrical equipment - leach out of dumps and are washed off the land into the rivers. The rivers whoosh them out into the sea where they sink to the bed.

Lowlife fish sucking around the bed hoover them up. Silly old man catches these lowlife fish and turns them into pellets which he feeds to his farmed salmon. Wise old wild salmon feed mainly from the mid-water, avoiding the chemical excesses of those hoovering around the seabed.

Remember: it's just a few nanogrammes of PCBs found in a couple of tonnes of fish that are so lethally dangerous.

But what, at the back end of last year, did the Americans send across the oceans to the North-East? Why, it was 401 tonnes of PCBs aboard four rotting "ghost ships".

Of course, everyone believes the assurances that should the ships be dismantled, the PCBs will be stored absolutely safely for the rest of eternity beside the Tees, and not a single nanogramme will ever leach out into the river, into the sea, into the fish, into the mother-to-be...

If a few nanogrammes of PCBs in a piece of fish are dangerous, 401 tonnes bobbing about on the ocean in a couple of scrap tin cans must be equivalent to a dirty bomb.

THE word 'drawer' has many uses. A drawer is someone who does drawings, who draws up legal documents, and who draws money from a bank.

Someone who fills a jug is a water-drawer; someone who serves foaming ale in a pint glass is a beer-drawer. Someone who hauls coal from the face to the top is a coal-drawer, someone who rakes coke from an oven is a coke-drawer, someone who buys straw in bulk is a straw-drawer, someone who stretches wire in a wireworks is a wire-drawer.

A garment which is drawn onto the lower part of the body and the legs is a pair of drawers.

And, of course, a box which is fitted into a cabinet so it can be drawn out horizontally is a drawer in a chest of drawers.

Although not always in this column, which before Christmas, as several people have pointed out, included an emotional piece about old school socks in a "sock-draw". Sorry.

But thanks, too, to the gentleman who was so touched by the article that he anonymously sent in an ancient pair of school rugby socks which he claims have been on an expedition to the Arctic.

Thankfully, they are clean, and now they have pride of place in my desk draw.