Capsules

SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS

Being in a room with people who are smoking can be hazardous to your health. Fact or fancy? Fact, says Cardiologist Wilbert Aronow of the University of California College of Medicine at Irvine. In a study at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital, Aronow tested the effects of passive smoking (breathing smoke-contaminated air) on ten men with severe coronary-artery disease. All of them had angina pectoris, a condition marked by chest pain and triggered by not enough oxygen reaching the heart. Each man sat in an 11-ft. by 12-ft. room with three people who each smoked five cigarettes over a period of two hours. Ordinarily, the men could pedal exercise about four minutes before experiencing chest pains. After sitting in a smoke-filled room, they were forced to stop after only 2 1/2 to 3 min., and their heart rates and blood pressures rose as they inhaled the nicotine-laden air. Concludes Aronow: "Passive smoking aggravates angina pectoris."

SKATEBOARD INJURIES

When skateboard fever surfaced in the 1970s, sales were not the only thing to skyrocket. The estimated number of skateboard injuries treated in emergency rooms, a measly 3,682 in 1973, rose in 1977 to a whopping 140,070, about a third of them fractures. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Injury Information Clearinghouse once ranked skateboards (along with scooters and skates) 42nd on the list of hazards; now the group is No. 7. Very few injuries are due to product defects. Says Clearinghouse Director Nancy Johnston: "We found that a lot of injuries occur in the first week of use or with borrowed skateboards. They're due to the skateboarder not having enough experience, balance or judgment."

Though injuries in the first six months of 1978 were down to 45,698 from 70,874 for the same period last year, Johnston says that "by the end of the year, the number could still catch up."

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