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Show THE SIGNPOST WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY MONDAY, MARCH 29,2010 Fruit's dangerous little secret By Abby Campbell Correspondent I The Signpost Each year, nearly one billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed intofieldsand orchards around the country. But, as families who live nearby can attest, those pesticides don't always stay in thefieldsand orchards. A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intendedforpreventing, destroying, repellingormitigating pests. A pesticide may be a chemical substance, biological agent (such as a virus or bacterium), antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest. Pests include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals,fish,nematodes (roundwonns) and microbes that destroy property, spread disease or are vectors for disease or cause a nuisance. Although there are benefits to the use of pesticides, there are also drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other animals. The dangers of pesticides hit close to home for Weber State University junior Elena Dominguez and her family. Before she moved to Utah, Dominguez lived in a town in eastern Washington where apple orchards were prevalent. The trees, nestled against schools and homes, brought more than apples, though; they also brought pesticide sprayers. Dominguez frequently warned her children to stay far away from the pesticides sprayed in their town, but those warnings were the last thing on her mind two years ago, when a frightening call forced her to rush to her daughter Anne's middle school. "I got a call towards the end of the day from the school that Anne wasn't feeling well," Dominguez said. "When I got there, I started to panic. She was in a serious stupor, eyes rolling back in her head. She could barely stand." Dominguez's daughter was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors informed Elena that her daughter's See Pesticide page 4 Chewing gum could kill you By Christee Kyte Correspondent 1 The Signpost In the 20 years Shawn McQuilkin, MD, has worked at the health clinic for Weber State University, he has never had a patient with an injury from chewing gum. However, he said that if a gum inhalation did present itself, he would consider it a serious matter. "If someone came into the clinic that had swallowed a big bolus of gum and were having respiratory distress, I would send them over to the hospital," McQuilkin said. "It could cause a serious enough problem in plugging up a bronchial where you wouldn't get enough air back there and it could collapse the lung." McQuilkin said that while the lung can effectively clear itself of smaller particles and fluid, it could not do so with a solid mass as a wad of chewing gum, which could result in a serious complication that could lead to death. "After admission into a hospital," McQuilkin said, "a specialist would need to be called in with a fiberoptic bronchial-scope to see if it was a foreign body that could be retrieved." Just this month, a college student wrote to the MedHelp Respiratory Disorders Community, fearing her life would be shortened due to gum aspiration. She explained her experience after she inhaled a wad of chewing gum during class three years prior. After the professor made her laugh, she inhaled the gum and gasped deeply, only causing the gum to go farther down the airway. At this point she believed she could breathe well and needed no further medical attention. After a year and a half of seeking medical help for a persistent cough and problems swallowing, she couldn't find a doctor that would refer her to a specialist. Each doctor insisted that she was mistaken, and the gum she believed was causing the afflictions was a phobia. Soon the cough and throat discomfort subsided. A year later the student said she felt like a zombie without restful sleep, having difficulty focusing and suffering from daily morning headaches. After being screened for sleep apnea, she showed a normal range but the medical team could not explain why her oxygen levels were considerably low. She continued to explain that a week ago she began to hear a whirring or whistling noise when she inhaled. "Basically, I don't know what to do," she wrote. "The fact that my low oxygen levels can't be explained by sleep apnea or anything else I've heard, the whirring noise, the symptoms I had a while back, and the knowledge that I have inhaled a piece of gum all make me think that if I don't deal with this thing right, once and for all, I may shorten my life significantly. Am I crazy? What should I do?" According to MedHelp.org and Askthedoctor.com, her question is under review. See Gum page 8 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MIKI ETO 1 THE SIGNPOST Caffeine's literal heartache By Mandy DeVaney * Correspondent I The Signpost College students are looking for substances to stay awake and focused as they start to cram for final projects and tests. The most common student go-to is energy drinks, but many students are unaware of the health risks these drinks pose. "I used to drink energy drinks before I would start long homework assignments," said Alesia Semborski, a Utah State University graduate, "but now that I have graduated T find mvsfilf drinking them to get through a work day." Most soft drinks contain 25-40 mg of caffeine, and most energy drinks at least double that. Consuming these high levels of caffeine can cause addiction and promote certain health problems. "I use to drink 3-4 energy drinks a day," said Matt Ellis, a Weber State University cheerleader, "but then I heard about a 17-year-old haying a heart attack because of them on the news. I now drink one a day." The extreme levels of caffeine can cause both short- and long-term health problems, including insomnia, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, infertility, ulcers and heart disease. Arrhythmia (irregularity of heartbeats) and dehydration are also side effects of energy drinks. "I have noticed that the more caffeine I drink in a given day, the less sleep I tend to get," Semborski said. "That leaves the need for more caffeine the next day." The effett energy drinks have on heart rate and blood pressure is the biggest health risk See Caffeine page 4 liiHU Hypochondriacal Hypothesis Kory Wood Signpost columnist Recently, a friend of mine uttered the following sentence: "I was worried I might be a hypochondriac, but I think it just might be a symptom of my lactose-induced anxiety." Sometimes, I picture one of my ancestors rising from the grave to visit me, and I take them to the organic foods store and watch their reaction. "What the heck is fish oil, and why are people willingly ingesting it?" they might ask. Take my deceased grandfather, for example, who was raised during the Great Depression. His name was Frederick Worlton Wood, but he always went by "Wort" because times were tough and people just had to do without those frilly and extravagant extra letters in their names, dnd that's just the way it was. A longtime resident of Huntsville, Utah, he came home every night after a long day's work to take care of his massive farm. This is a man who wouldn't let my grandma throw out the leftover bacon grease because he liked to spread it on his toast. He ate a bowl of ice cream every night of his life. His cobs of corn were merely transportation vehicles for butter, and he worked for the IRS his whole life, which is far worse for one's cardiovascular health than bacon grease. If my friend were to try to explain to my grandpa the connection between milk products and his mental state, he would have been handed a shovel and a fistful of obscenities and been sent into the barn for a week. And if Wort were to ever see how much bottled water my family burned through in a month, he would shake his head, swear and ask if anyone was selling us bottled air yet. Thank heavens he didn't live to see frozen yogurt. Now, I am in no way discrediting milk allergies or organic foods or bottled water from pure artesian Swiss wells or multivitamins or anything like that. I'm just saying we as a species are getting weaker. And the decline seems to be fairly recent. Even when I was a kid, I can remember eating a box of something like Sugar-Caked Frosting Orbs every morning See Hypochondria page 8 |