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Show Page Four FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1971 How Vitamins and Enzymes Interact to Guard Our Health Let's Stop Inflation (Continued from page 1) A nationwide campaign, reaching into every county in the United States, to mobilize the public behind the countrys effort to control inflation and create peacetime jobs, in being organized by Citizens for a New Prosperity a volunteer group with headquarters in Washington, D.C. Headed by a committee representing various segments of society, the citizens group is in the process of developing state committees which will carry the fight the inflation campaign into local communities. National chairman is Hobart Lewis, president of Readers Digest, a nd Henry H. Fowler, Secretary of Treasury in the Johnson administration, is vice chairman. Announce ment of the plans for statewide organization, Mr. Lewis explained that the citizens group recognizes that the public needs the opportunity to understand the issues involved in the countrys economic problems, to voice their concerns and to support efforts to achieve economic stability and growth. We recognize that problems can be overcome and diprogress made only if citizen action is added to the rectives and decisions of the exective and legislative branches of the federal government, he said. He urged all Americans who are concerned about lialting spiraling living costs, creating employment opportunities and helping make American goods and services competitive in world markets to join in with the efforts of the Citizens for a New Prosperity. non-partis- an Standards for Toxic Metals Little Better Than Guesses Toxic metals in the environment are more insidious than pesticides and herbicides, and the standards set for metals in air, water and food are currently little more than guesses, according to a survey reported in Chemical & Engineering News. Standards set in Russia for toxic metals are sometimes 100 time stricter tlian those in the United States. Different approaches are used in the two countries to detect toxicity, and there is some uncertainty about which approach is correct. The problem of setting standards for metals in the environment is complicated by the fact that a metals toxicity may vary depending upon what other pollutants are simultaneously present. IIow can scientists detect harmful responses to very low doses of trace metals and once detected, how can the responses which are simply adaptive he differentiated from those which represent the first stages of disease? Until these questions and relationships are more thoroughly explored and answers found, air, water and food residues are likely to be based on little more than guesses. As Dr. Emil Pfitzer, University of Cincinnati environmental scientist, jestingly puts it, some standards are first calculated by a prominent scientist riding in a taxi on the way to a meeting. Current confusion surrounding standards for trace metals is illustrated by the wide gap between U. S. and Soviet industrial standards for metals. Often U.S. standards are a hundred fold higher than those in the USSR. In the USSR subtle changes in conditioned rcilex response are used to detect the lowest level at which an environmental agent has an effect on humans or animals. If the Soviet method is accurately picking up early For nearly half a century the quantities of these substances can physicians have known that vita- play so great a role in the mainmins are essential nutrients; as tenance of human health, might absoluetly essential as proteins, still be unsolved but for the recarbohydrates and fats. But they search of another group of biowere long puzzled by a startling chemists the enzyme explorers. difference between vitamins and Their central interest was in other nutrients. To build and a special protein class; the large, maintain our tissues, we need complex molecules whose reseveral pounds of ordinary food sponsibility it is to carry out the every day. But our need for all overwhelming majority of the the known vitamins combined chemical processes by which all adds up to less than a single living things, fungi, bacteria, or ounce in an entire year. Yet these people nutrients, rebuild trace quantites of vitamins make them intodigest tissues and, in animals all the difference between vi- develop the energy that moves brant good health and a long muscles and the electrical imscries of debilitating diseases. pulses by which brains and the an infant who nerves For example, function. receives about 400 units of VitaDuring the 19th century, piomin D every day will develop neer enzyme researchers learned straight and sturdy bones, but to recognize a number of enif his otherwise perfect diet lacks zymes by their activities. By this miniscule amount of Vitamin 1897, the Germans had extracted D he will inevitably develop the the enzyme by which yeast had bowed legs and distorted rib changed sugar into alcohol. Five structure of rickets. Deprive an years later the British made an- adult of just a few miligrams of Vitamin C a day about as much as you could place on half the head of a pin, and within just a month or two he will begin to suffer the bleeding gums and the bone and cartilage deteriorations of scurvy. Deprive an individual as as little as three milligrams of Vitamin B1 and he will soon lose his appetite, fall into a chronic state of fatigue and experience severe nervous disorders. Rob his diet of one microgram daily of Vitamin B6 and he will develop skin ailments, anemias and may even experience seizures resembling epilepsy. The twin mysteries of how the vitamins worked within bodies, and why such extremely tiny - THE SALT LAKE TIMES 4 the IEASED GRAPEVINE Assessed valuation of Murray City jumped from about $27 million in 1970 to $34 million this year due to Salt Lake County reassessing property in Murray area. This year year assessors from the Salt Lake County office have been going throughout Murray reassessing the property and have made some adjustments. The statewide goal is an assessed valuation approximating 20 per cent of the propertys fair market value. Most property is below this figure and county assessors under direction of the state are working to bring the figures up to this level. other major discovery. They The Utah State Board of Edutook these yeast extracts, then cation favored a single known as zymase, and placed it electedofficially board of education to mem- control all in a bag, a semi-permeab- le brane through which only the small molecules could pass. To their surprise, neither the large molecules which remained In the bag nor the small ones which passed through it, retained enzyme activity. To their even greater surprise, they found that they had merely to pool the two substances to regain all original enzyme activity. They concluded that the large molecules could work as an enzyme only in conjunction with the small molecule second substance which they then called co-zyma- se. signals of long term chronic poisoning, then the U. S. standards are obviously too high, he reasons, but if the Soviets merely are measuring adaptive response to environmental change, as some U.S. experts argue they doing, conditioned reflex may be a largely useless tool. Dr. Henry A. Shroeder, physiologist in Dartmouth Medical Schools trace element laboratory, has spent much of his career seeking answers to the riddle of trace metals toxicity. In the air cadmium is a present and real hazard. Lead is a potential and imminent hazard. Nickel from the combustion of coal, petroleum, diesel fuel and residual public education in the state. Vote on the motion was six in favor, none dissent-in- , one member abstaining, and the chairman not voting. The board made it clear that it was voting for a board, not asking that the State Board of Education be given such authority over all schools. It was emphasized that such a single board would be a policy making, not an operating or administrative board. Salt Lake City will have to continue to give Salt Lake County half of the money collected on tickets given by Utah Highway Patrol troopers for violations on highways within Salt Lake City limits. The city stands to lose more than $25,000 a year under the arrangement. It had sought to have the troopers cite city ordinance when issuing the tickets in the city limits, thereby allowing all the revenues to remain in the city. An opinion from the attorney generals office ruled that the troopers may continue to cite state statutes. Sail Lake County Sheriff Del-mLarson prefers Fords to Dodges. This was the assumption oils is another potential danger. when the sheriff sent out bids Dr. Shroder believes that toxic metals in the environ-me- n for 25 new patrol cars for his Sheriff Larson has are a more insidious problem than pollution by pesti- department. said that he wants to buy special cides, weed killers, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon equipped Fords from Colonial monoxide and other gross contaminants. No metal is Ford which was second low bid of $86,780. The low bid was degradable. from Hinckleys, Inc., on 25 speAlthough burning of fossil fuels (including gasoline cial equipped Dodge polaras with with additives) appears to be the largest source of trace a bid of $86,753.25. Price differelement emissions to the air, other sources exist that may ence of $36.75. Fords comprise most of the sheriffs fleet at presprove to be important ent. All parts are interchangeable and a manufacturers local service school helps train mear chanics. Where thousands of listeners enjoy concert music and news every day! City Commissioner George B. Catmull has asked Mayor J. Bracken Lee to appoint a new member of the Commission to replace him on the City Housing Authority, on the Neighborhood Development Program and the Model Cities Board. He told the Mayor the authority hasnt been able to accomplish anything because we have been unable to obtain any federal funds. Mr. Catmull has announced that he will retire from his present position of City Streets Department Commissioner after the first week in December. |