No apple bobbing this Halloween - health and safety gone mad

It’s a tradition most sensible people would regard as no more dangerous than a good old egg and spoon or sack race, but now hospital bosses have issued a bizarre Halloween health and safety warning on the "extreme" dangers of apple bobbing.

Participants have been advised to wear goggles, remove stalks and use bottled water as Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust issued a statement saying that a ‘high-velocity impact with an apple’ had the potential to cause serious eye injury, while dirty water could lead to infection or blindness.

Parwez Hossain, the hospital’s eye consultant, even suggested contestants remove the apples from the water with their hands instead of their mouth.

More health and safety craziness

Below we have listed some of our favourite crazy health and safety warnings, and yes they are all true.

Mistletoe + Christmas Party = Sexual harassment

In 2004 the ultimate party poopers over at The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents informed the unions that employers shouldn’t put up any mistletoe in their offices in case it encourages sexual harassment. 

Uni students banned from tossing their hats

In 2008 the bosses at Anglia Ruskin University decided that their happy graduates could no longer chuck their mortarboards in the air for fears that a student could be seriously injured by the corner of one of the square caps.

Council removes goalposts on pitch in fear of ramblers walking into them at night…

Maybe Cheshire County Council had just had enough of footballers taking over their area when they decided to remove the goalposts on a local playing field. A health and safety inspection deemed the posts dangerous to walkers who could hit their heads on them whilst carefully studying their maps at night so decided to move them. 

Foam floats banned from swimming pools

The floats were banned from the Dudley swimming pool because the local Council feared that children and adults could accidentally be whacked over the head by (one can only assume) aggressive foam wielding swimmers. Maybe the Council would prefer beginners to use other swimmers as floating devices?

The bonkers war on conkers

It seems adults have forgotten how fun it is to smash things into pieces! In order to prevent his students from getting potential conker shrapnel in their eyes, the safety conscious head teacher Shaun Halfpenny at Cummersdale Primary School in Carlisle made his students wear safety goggles before playing, "It's just being sensible, we live in a litigious society," he said.
South Tyneside District Council went a step further and decided to chop down their horse chestnut trees and plant some safer species after kids in the area climbed up and fell down.  The local head teacher at nearby Ashley Primary School, Phil Grice, condemned the move and said: "Initially I understood the concerns over health and safety, but this is just common sense gone out the window.” Maybe there is hope for kids after all…