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Last updated 9/22/2004

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Even dad's smoke bad for fetuses

By Anita Srikameswaran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wednesday, July 27, 2005

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05208/544237.stm

It's not enough for a woman to stop smoking when she becomes pregnant, a new study suggests. To protect the developing fetus, other family members should stop smoking too, and expectant mothers should stop contact with anyone who smokes.

Pooling data from three earlier studies, Stephen G. Grant, an environmental and occupational health researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, found that secondhand smoke leads to the same number of genetic mutations in newborns as does smoking by the mother herself.

As Grant put it: "Passive exposure gives you just as much of an exposure and just as bad damage as active smoking."

His findings were recently published in the online journal BMC Pediatrics.

U.S. BODIES HAVE FEWER DANGEROUS CHEMICALS

By Daniel Yee, Associated Press, 2005-07-21
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BODY_CHEMICALS?SITE=CAWOO&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

ATLANTA (AP) -- Americans have lower levels of lead, secondhand-smoke byproducts and other potentially dangerous substances in their bodies than they did a decade ago, according to perhaps the most extensive government study ever of exposure to environmental chemicals.

The CDC released its first National Report on Exposure to Environmental Chemicals in 2001 and has updated it every two years. For its latest findings, the CDC took blood and urine samples from about 2,400 people in 2001 and 2002 and tested for 148 environmental chemicals, including metals, pesticides, insect repellants and disinfectants.

The CDC stressed that the presence of an environmental chemical in blood or urine "does not mean that the chemical causes disease."

In the early 1990s, 4.4 percent of U.S. children ages 1 to 5 had elevated lead levels. That dropped to 1.6 percent between 1999 and 2002, according to the latest study.

Gauging the effect of secondhand smoke, the CDC tested for nonsmokers' levels of cotinine, a product of nicotine after it enters the body. Levels dropped by 75 percent in adults and 68 percent in children between the early 1990s and 2002, the CDC said.

Gerberding said the decrease came from restrictions on smoking. But more work needs to be done to reduce secondhand smoke, she said. Blacks still had more than twice the cotinine levels of whites or Mexican-Americans. Levels in children were more than twice those of nonsmoking adults.

This report is available at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport

 SPIT TOBACCO LIFTS RISK OF HEART DISEASE, STROKE

 Source: Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette

Date: 2005-07-27

Author: From Local Dispatches

URL: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05208/544040.stm

ID: 202733

 Men who use spit (either snuff or chewing) tobacco have a higher risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and all causes combined compared to non-users, two large prospective studies from the American Cancer Society find.

A prospective study follows a group of healthy people over time to gauge consequences of certain behaviors.

The studies are the largest to date on the subject and challenge the claim that smokeless tobacco might be an acceptable alternative to smoking. . . .

"These studies point to a significant potential danger of spit tobacco," said Dr. Michael J. Thun, the society's head of epidemiology and co-author of the report.

Category -Health/Science -Cardio-vascular -Stroke -Smokeless -Harm Reduction

 Exercise-Induced Asthma More Clearly Linked to High-Salt Diet

12 Jun 2005

An Indiana University professor may have uncovered the mechanisms by which high-salt diets can trigger exercise-induced asthma, offering the most complete picture to date of how dietary factors can both aggravate and alleviate the symptoms of this common condition.

The study by exercise physiologist Timothy Mickleborough and his research team in IU Bloomington's Department of Kinesiology demonstrated for the first time that modifying salt intake for two weeks alters airway inflammation and the flow of oxygen into the bloodstream, termed the diffusion capacity of the lungs.

"These findings show that modifying your diet has the potential to modify a disease state," Mickleborough said. The findings appear in the June issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, and Mickleborough presented them on June 3 at the annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine in Nashville, Tenn.

Exercise-induced asthma, also called exercise-induced bronchoconstriction, is a condition in which vigorous physical activity triggers an acute narrowing of the airway afterward, making breathing difficult. Up to 90 percent of people with asthma have EIA, in addition to as much as 10 percent of the general population without asthma and more than 10 percent of elite athletes. EIA typically is treated with medications, some of which are banned in international competition.

The randomized, double-blind, crossover study involved 24 people with physician-diagnosed asthma and EIA. Study participants on the low-salt diet consumed 1,446 milligrams of sodium per day. Participants on the high-salt diet consumed 9,873 milligrams of sodium per day, an amount Mickleborough described as typical for many adults.

Participants on the high-salt diet showed a dramatic decline in lung function after physical activity. Twenty minutes after exercising, the forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) -- a measure of lung function -- of participants on the high-salt diet had dropped by 27.4 percent compared to just 7.9 percent for participants on the low-salt diet. Mickleborough attributed this to a combination of factors caused by the high-salt diet, including high blood pressure and increased blood volume. These factors can cause pulmonary edema, which can lead to airway obstruction. Mickleborough said a drop of 10 percent or more in post-exercise FEV1 is considered abnormal (EIA positive), so the participants with the low-salt diet essentially eliminated their EIA symptoms.

Mickleborough and his team also found a higher percentage of airway cells, which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of asthma and EIA, in the sputum of study participants on the high-salt diet, along with more proinflammatory mediators, which can cause constriction of the airways.

Mickleborough has been studying the impact of diet on exercise-induced asthma for eight years. His earlier research found that increased consumption of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, commonly found in fish oil, also could reduce EIA symptoms in asthmatics after just three weeks.

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"Mass media aliens are sucking out your kids' brains" by David Batstone

News To Use    7/21/2005

Published by the Adolescent Health Initiative, United Way of Central

West Virginia   Margo Friend, Adolescent Health Initiative Director

It is a curious thing. Parents by and large carefully instruct their children in the values that are important to them. But many of those same parents are cavalier about the kind of media - and the values those media convey - that their kids immerse themselves in on a daily basis. The majority of kids spend a good slice of their day consuming mass media. Studies show that children spend on average four-and-a- half hours a day in front of televisions, video games, and computers. And what are the messages they receive? Dr. David Walsh, author of Selling Out America's Children: How America Puts Profits before Values and What Parents Can Do, identifies six key values that dominate mass media. It is hard to argue with his list:

1. Happiness is found in having things.

2. Get all you can for yourself.

3. Get it all as quickly as you can.

4. Win at all costs.

5. Violence is entertaining.

6. Always seek pleasure and avoid boredom.

 While individual parents may teach strong values, they are contradicted and drowned out by enticing and technologically alluring counter-voices. "When faced with these odds, parents' messages have difficulty competing," contends Walsh. I am convinced that we are desperately in need of media alternatives that identify and reinforce a set of cultural values that promote healthy children and a healthy society. Call me a dreamer, but I am passionate about the key role of independent media in sustaining a vibrant community. Big ideas, creative ideas, out-of-the-box ideas rarely find their way into the mainstream media. They are strained out - or tamed - long before they hit prime time.

 Most critics who share my point of view on the corroding influence of media on kids' values feature the negative messages of violence and irresponsible sexuality. But I as well am deeply concerned about the way that mass media sucks the creativity and individuality out of young minds. Several years ago I interviewed for Sojourners** one of Australia's most favored sons, Tim Winton. Winton is a novelist who was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize twice before he turned 40. When I interviewed Winton, he had just written Cloudstreet, perhaps his signature novel. One of the key characters in Cloudstreet is a woman who gets so fed up with her family that she takes up living in a tent in the family's backyard. I asked Winton how he conjured up the concept of the character. To my surprise, he said that his grandmother lived in a tent in his backyard when he was growing up on the west coast of Australia. When I asked him if the neighbors thought that peculiar, he replied, "No that was just grandma." He went on to lament that the push of media around the globe, with such narrow messages, "has squeezed all the eccentricity out of life." Winton then added with a sad voice, "Everyone just wants to be normal."

 Yes, we celebrate individualism. But the truth is, I'm dying to meet an individual. Most middle-class Americans dress like a Gap ad - or self-consciously dress anti-Gap - aspire to own an IPod, and have made it a personal goal to travel to Australia in the next five years. Certainly I do not blame the corporate media entirely for our lemming-ness, but it certainly does not encourage us to question the gods of materialism.

 In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S, according to the Media Reform Information Center. By 1992, fewer than 25 companies owned and operated 90% of the mass media - controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services, and photo agencies. Today, the number of major media players has fallen to six. Okay, to be honest, I do get some satisfaction sitting around with a coffee mug in hand and whining about trends that I find alarming. But eventually I do get around to doing something to change it! That is why I am leading a charge at Sojourners to partner up with creative and free-thinking media producers. No doubt my first choice - Boomerang! - has something to do with the fact that I have four children, and I find it so hard to find good options for them.

 Not to be confused with SojoMail's ** letters to the editor section, Boomerang! is a 70-minute CD in the format of a "magazine." Think of it as NPR's All Things Considered for kids. My daughter Jade, then 8 years old, introduced me to Boomerang! at our dinner table one night.

We were discussing what was going on in the world, and she cited former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in perfect context. Stunned, I asked her how she knew who Golda Meir was. "Boomerang!" she replied with a big smile on her face. Each month Boomerang! discusses topics such as nanotechnology and affirmative action, takes children into King Tut's tomb, unlocks the mysteries of virtual reality, teaches about deficit spending at Freddie's Rhubarb and Banana Sandwich Stand, or sits in on an interview with a 13-year-old novelist. It's been heralded by the American Library Association, won the coveted Parent's Choice Award, and its kid subscribers listen to each issue an average of 16 times. Produced in the rural California town of Pescadero, the performers and hosts are all local kids. It is privately - not corporately - owned and plans to stay that way. Good media options like Boomerang! are actually doing something to change the alarming trends we see all around us. Not only does it enrich children's lives, it's a way to plant your own stake in the ground to support independent media. The award-winning audio magazine for kids that raises their spirits and stirs their imaginations. If television is chewing gum for the eyes, Boomerang! is granola for the ears. - Charles Trueheart, The Washington Post

At home in West Virginia

This school year we had 53 N-O-T programs and 52 ATS programs running. I have collected program evaluations for 496 students. 37% of the students participating in N-O-T have quit using tobacco and 32 percent have reduced their intake (Compared to other programs which only achieve a 12.63 percent quit rate. Of the surveys evaluated this year 75 percent had the added question regarding spit tobacco use14.6 percent of participants were spit tobacco users. Among spit tobacco users 41 percent quit and 12 percent reduced their use.  When we looked at the spit tobacco use in the ATS program we found that although this program is designed solely as an educational program 22 percent of participants quit and 22 percent reduced their use. When we analyzed the spit tobacco users we found that 7 percent of spit tobacco users quit and 12 percent reduced their use.

 We have provided teachers a total of 458 N-O-T Student Journals and 170 ATS Student Journals so far this year. I have held five NOT facilitator training events with 67 participants certified. I have awarded $14,850 in incentive stipends and $2,400 in mini-grants.

 I would like to congratulate all facilitators that have provided N-O-T & ATS programs in their schools this school year.