Student Loan Blog : health risks

Gone in a Puff of Smoke: College Campuses Cutting Out Smoking

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:31:00 GMT

To smoke or not to smoke? That isn’t so much the question anymore as, Where art thou, Legally Sanctioned Smoking Area? And the answer to that is harder and harder to find as the number of smoking bans increases across both the country and college campuses.

According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, as of October 1, 2007, there are 95 colleges and universities nationwide with campus-wide smoke-free policies, and almost another 300 with partial bans that prohibit smoking in all residential housing (“U.S. Colleges and Universities With Smokefree Air Policies,” Oct. 1, 2007).

The most recent additions to the list include schools in New Jersey, Indiana, and Georgia, and with this November 15^th representing the 31^st anniversary of the national Great American Smokeout, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network is pushing for more schools to follow suit, reports Judy Fortin for CNN (“Smoke-Free College Trend Growing,” Nov. 12, 2007).

A Battle Against Statistics

Smoking rates in the United States are highest among college-age students, Fortin notes, with college students smoking more even as all other age groups cut down on their tobacco use. But anti-smoking students, administrators, and other advocates continue to push for their cause.

“Students form lifelong habits in college, so reducing their exposure to cigarettes may have a lasting effect,” writes Emily Bazar for USA Today, quoting Besty Foy of the American College Health Association (“More Colleges Banning Smoking,” March 1, 2007).

“If you’re not allowed to smoke on campus, if you can’t buy tobacco products on campus, it will definitely deter some students from smoking,” says Foy.

The Non-Smoking Campus: Healthier But Less Safe?

Advocates for campus smoking bans argue that the average student and especially those students plagued with asthma or other chronic lung problems have the right to a healthful environment at school.

When a campus is smoke-free, “it’s just a healthier place to be,” says Martha Nesbitt, president of Georgia’s Gainesville State College, in Fortin’s article. Gainesville State is in its fourth year of a campus-wide ban on all tobacco products.

“As you go in a building,” says Nesbitt, “you’re not going to have to go through smoke. When you walk out, you don’t see cigarette butts littered around. It’s just a cleaner, healthier campus.”

For college smokers, on the other hand—and according to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, that’s 28.4 percent of full-time college students and 43.5 percent of part-time students—school smoking bans don’t just raise an issue of infringement on personal freedom, they could compromise student safety on campus.

New Jersey’s Bergen Community College, which was scheduled to pass its proposed campus-wide smoking ban last month, has a 167-acre campus, meaning students may have quite a long walk for a smoke break.

Michael McFadden, a smokers’ rights advocate in the area, says the proposed ban would create safety issues for the school’s students, forcing them off campus.

“It can put the student in a dangerous situation,” says McFadden, in an article by Patricia Alex in Drexel University’s The Triangle. In McFadden’s view, Alex writes, “the bans amount to social engineering that is more Orwellian than American” (“New Jersey College Passes Campus Wide Smoking Ban,” Oct. 19, 2007).

Student smokers who live on campus find the bans to be particularly unfair, considering these injunctions prohibit them from exercising a personal choice within or near their own residence.

“I can vote for president of the United States. I can go to war,” says Alex Eukmer, a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, in Bazar’s USA Today article. “But I can’t necessarily smoke a cigarette because they’re afraid I’ll make a bad choice?”

But for a growing number of college administrators, it’s not a question of good or bad student choices, but of the choice the school itself wants to make when it comes to smoking.

“We want our institution to make a statement about doing the right things when it comes to good health,” says Chuck Kupchella, president of the University of North Dakota, in Bazar’s article. He sums up the nationwide college smoking debate bluntly: “Smokers still will have rights, but just not on our campus.”

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Death by Popcorn

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:43:00 GMT

Microwave popcorn “pushers” grossed well over a billion dollars ($1.33 billion to be exact) in the year 2000.

But this popular, ubiquitous snack food may be adversely affecting your health, making you sick and potentially even leading to death.

We’re totally serious: Your microwave popcorn could be killing you.

Smog, Carbon Monoxide, and Now—the Waft of Bogus Butter

Whether you’re settling in on the couch to take a TiVo break or just looking for an easy snack, microwave popcorn has a tantalizing go-to convenience: five minutes and you’re in hot buttered heaven.

But that rich, savory smell is exactly what got one Colorado man seriously sick. “When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” writes Gardiner Harris in a New York Times article (“Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit,” Sep. 5, 2007).

That fragrance comes from diacetyl, a chemical added to microwave popcorn to give it its buttery flavor and smell. Although eating foods that contain diacetyl hasn’t previously been found to pose health risks, inhalation of the fumes produced when diacetyl is heated has been linked to “popcorn lung,” a respiratory disease found in workers at food-flavoring factories and popcorn plants.

The Colorado man, Wayne Watson, went to his doctor, plagued by a worsening cough and deteriorating shortness of breath.

A self-confessed “Mr. Popcorn,” Watson told his personal physician, Dr. Cecile Rose, that he had been eating at least two bags of microwave popcorn every day for over 10 years. Rose discovered the popcorn link on a hunch, asking Watson about his popcorn consumption after noticing similarities between Watson’s symptoms and those of popcorn factory workers afflicted with popcorn lung.

Following her theory, Rose measured levels of diacetyl in Watson’s home after he made popcorn and found levels of the chemical were comparable to those in microwave popcorn plants. Naturally, she encouraged Watson to kick his popcorn habit.

Six months later, Watson’s lung condition has improved. But that hasn’t alleviated concerns among the medical community and industry officials: Until Watson, popcorn lung had only been found only in flood-flavoring and popcorn plant workers, not in everyday consumers.

Professional Poppers Plagued by “Popcorn Lung”

Popcorn lung, medically referred to as bronchiolitis obliterans, is the obliteration of tiny airways in the lungs and can be fatal. When the vapors from heated diacetyl are inhaled over a long period of time, Harris explains, “the small airways in the lungs [can] become swollen and scarred. Sufferers can breathe in deeply, but they have difficulty exhaling.”

Flavoring manufacturers have so far paid out over $100 million as a result of lawsuits brought by affected workers, according to ABC News (“Could Microwave Popcorn Be Toxic?,” May 16, 2007).

ABC recounts the case of Jerry Blaylock, a 53-year-old employee for a flavoring company in St. Louis, Mo. After just 10 months at the plant, Blaylock developed the condition and his lungs now only function at 45 percent capacity. Blaylock says he can no longer take his grandchildren to amusement parks or the zoo.

ConAgra Foods, manufacturer of Orville Redenbacher popcorn, has acknowledged a concern for “workplace exposure” to diacetyl, but told ABC News that “everyday use of its popcorn was safe for consumers.”

Despite ConAgra’s and other manufacturers’ assurances that the disease is isolated to plant workers, Watson’s case—which, according to Daniel DeNoon at WebMD, led Rose to fire off a letter on July 18 to the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—has raised concerns about the risks to consumers (“Microwave Popcorn Linked to Lung Harm,” Sep. 5, 2007).

Stopping the Pop, at Least for Now

So what does this mean for those of us who love our microwave popcorn and refuse to part with it, in spite of all the evidence that those delicious buttery aromas could be harming us?

You could continue eating it, but with some precautions. Here are some suggestions for dealing with the deadly fumes when your bag is fresh from the microwave:

§ Open it underneath your stove’s fan in the kitchen while holding your breath.

§ Have your least favorite roommate open it for you, then pretend you never read this article.

§ Open the bag and eat as much as you can as quickly as possible without breathing. Hope you don’t burn yourself.

For those of you who have the willpower to stay away from your five-minute snack that’s loaded with deadly diacetyl, you won’t have to deny yourselves forever.

Pop Weaver has already eliminated diacetyl from its products. And makers of major-league brands Orville Redenbacher, Act II, Pop Secret and Jolly Time have announced they’ll also be releasing diacetyl-free versions of their microwave popcorn.

Waiting until then to indulge your craving for a whiff of bagged imitation butter may be the wisest and healthiest move you can make.

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Meningitis Puts College Students at Risk

Student Loan Girl — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:46:00 GMT

The close quarters, the shared drinks, the all-nighters that weaken your immune system, and other aspects of your college lifestyle can make you more susceptible to meningitis, a virulent disease that, in its bacterial form, can kill you within days and sometimes even hours. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you still stand a 20 percent chance of suffering brain damage, arm and leg amputations, deafness, and vision loss.

Meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid near the brain and spinal cord, can strike in both bacterial and viral form. The disease is transmitted by direct contact and through your saliva when you sneeze, cough or kiss.

It’s often difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to the flu: high fever, severe headaches, stiff neck, rash, nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light.

Reported cases of meningitis are rare but more common on college campuses, where the cramped quarters of shared dorms are ideal breeding grounds for potential outbreaks. States are split on whether to make the vaccination voluntary or mandatory for college students.

Onset of Disease Looks Innocent but Quickly Turns Deadly

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find numerous accounts of otherwise healthy college students who have died or barely escaped death after contracting meningitis.

ABC News tells the story of Evan Bozof, a baseball player and pre-med student at Georgia Southwestern University. One day in 1998, he thought he was suffering from a migraine; 26 days later, the 20-year-old died after meningococcal meningitis ravaged his body. Both of his legs and arms had been amputated, he had lost all liver and kidney function and seizures led to irreversible brain damage (“For Parents, College Meningitis Deaths Still Evoke Pain,” Sep. 6, 2007).

Then there’s the MSNBC article on Ashley Lee, an 18-year-old at Indiana University Bloomington, who thought she was coming down with the flu (“Killer at College: Meningitis Threatens Students,” Sep. 5, 2007). After vomiting every half hour while at a frat party, she went home to rest. The next day, she collapsed and her family rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. Two years later, Lee’s still alive, but she’s undergone multiple surgeries, had a foot and three fingers amputated, and she lives with severe and permanent skin damage.

In Bozof’s case, his parents weren’t aware of the meningitis risks or that a simple vaccine could have saved their son. Hoping to spare others the same fate, Bozof’s mother went on to found the National Meningitis Association, which promotes education of the disease and universal vaccination.

In Lee’s case, her mother had taken her to get the vaccine before she left for college, six weeks prior to her contracting the disease, but the vaccine was out of stock at her doctor’s office. Lee, like Bozof’s parents, was unaware of the viciousness of meningitis and kept putting off getting the vaccine once she got to school—and then it was too late.

“I just didn’t know the severity of it,” Lee said in her MSNBC interview. “I thought it was just, like, another vaccination.”

Debating the Need for Mandated Vaccines

ABC News reports that there are 1,400 to 2,800 cases of bacterial meningitis in the United States each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for bacterial meningitis—around 13 percent—is more than 20 times higher than that for the measles, the number one childhood killer worldwide.

While some 10 to 20 percent of the population can carry the meningococcal bacteria in their nose or throat, 99.9 percent develop antibodies and never get sick, according to a CDC official quoted by ABC.

Increased awareness of the risks posed by meningitis as well as of the readily available vaccine has ignited a national debate, much of it centered on college campuses.

MSNBC reports that:

20 states currently require college students to either get the meningitis vaccination or sign a waiver that says they’ve read about the disease.
3 more states mandate the vaccination for college students but allow exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
11 states require only that information about the vaccine and the disease be provided on campus.

But a growing grassroots movement, led mainly by parents who have lost or nearly lost a child to the disease, want to see more states require the vaccination. The CDC recommends the meningitis vaccine, Menactra, for young people ages 11 to 18, but only 12 percent got the vaccine last year.

The vaccine is covered by some insurance companies and costs about $120 on college campuses.

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Buck the Trend of the Non-Vacation Nation by Taking Time for Yourself

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:45:00 GMT

Many recent grads who have settled into their first jobs out of college may just be learning the unwritten rules at their company, and how they can best climb the corporate ladder. Chances are, part of the mix includes working long hours, forgetting about your personal life (at least until you get those next few promotions and raises), and swearing off vacations and days off, all in the name of getting ahead.

Monday marked yet another Labor Day and for some, a much-needed three-day weekend. Some of you may have rested and done next to nothing, finding yourselves refreshed and ready to go back to work on Tuesday. Then there are those of you who saw the long weekend as an opportunity to rack up some overtime or to get ahead or caught up at work, and spent your time on your job, whether at the office or from home.

Are You Putting Yourself at Risk?

Americans are pathologically obsessed with work, writes Don Monkerud of AlterNet (“The Vanishing American Vacation,” Sep. 3, 2007). “Compared to people in other developed countries, Americans don’t ask for more vacation time, don’t take all the vacation time their employers give them and continue to work while they are on vacation.”

According to Monkerud, “40 percent of Americans work 50 hours a week and some workweeks typically run 60 to 70 hours.” And if we do manage to tear ourselves away from the office for a few days off, 88 percent of us take an electronic device in order to communicate with work, and 40 percent of us check our work e-mail.

Much of this work compulsion, Monkerud explains, stems from fear, “fear of leaving work that will pile up in their absence; fear that other employees will show more devotion to the job and get promoted above them; … and they’ve been convinced that economic success depends on subservience to employers who control their work lives.”

But while we’re frantically working ever more hours in a scramble to get ahead, this obsession with our work, numerous studies show, is putting our mental and physical health at risk.

“Working longer hours, such as at least 12 hours a day, was associated with a 37 percent increase in illness or injury, while working at least 60 hours a week was associated with a 23 percent increase,” writes Chantal Britt for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, summarizing the findings of a 2005 study (“Study: Long Hours Raise Illness, Injury Risk,” Aug. 22, 2005).

Other studies, writes David Moberg in In These Times, “indicate that taking vacations cuts in half the risk of heart attacks for men” (“What Vacation Days?,” June 18, 2007). For women, shorter maternity leaves have been linked to higher rates of postpartum depression (“Shorter Maternity Leaves Are a Danger to Working Mothers,” CareerJournal.com, May 21, 2004).

European full-time employees, who typically take seven to eight weeks of vacation and holidays each year, double the American average for full-time workers, says Moberg, “are happier, and have less stress and insecurity, which is good for health and longevity.”

And the unhappiness of U.S. workers is pervasive, cutting across industries and professions. “One in three American workers are chronically overworked and report job stress,” Monkerud writes.

The solution? He concludes that we as Americans need a “ ‘revised ideal of life’ that includes relaxation” and taking actual, real vacations with no work in sight.

Land of the Free, Home of the Slave

Monkerud points out that the United States is the only industrialized country on the planet that does not legally require its working population to take a vacation each year.

France requires workers to take at least 30 days off, and the average holiday taken is almost six weeks per year. England, Germany, Australia, Spain and Sweden require 20 or more days off, and China mandates three weeks off. Canada and Japan have 10 days off per year.

In contrast, writes Moberg, “the average private sector worker in the United States gets about nine paid vacation days and six paid holidays each year. Low-paid, part-time or small-business workers typically get far fewer, sometimes none.” A third of U.S. workers, says Monkerud, don’t even take the vacation days that are allotted to them.

And according to a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, nearly 25 percent of American workers have no paid vacation or holidays, and almost half of all private sector workers have no paid sick days.

Apparently, we’re all too busy thinking we’re being productive. Monkerud concedes that “we have the highest productivity in the world,” but mostly due to the fact that we work the longest hours.

In fact, as Moberg points out, Europe has nearly caught up to—with many countries pulling ahead of—the United States in terms of labor productivity (the output for each hour of work), which he calls “the key measure of an economy’s potential.”

U.S. workers, writes Moberg, “have rapidly increased the amount of goods and services they produce each year, in comparison to Europe,” but Europeans are producing the same, if not more of these goods and services per hour—they’re just working fewer hours than we are, and enjoying a more positive state of mental and physical health and less social economic disparity as they do it.

And where does all this ballyhooed American work ethic get us? Working long hours to get ahead, taking working vacations and forgetting about time off altogether doesn’t appear to have improved our quality of life, increased our savings or better prepared us for retirement. Writes Monkerud:

After decades of decline, the number of workers 55 and over has increased. Today 6.4 percent of those 75 and older work. The number of those receiving pensions decreased by half since 1980 and the age to receive full Social Security benefits increased to 67.

And Moberg argues that the recent increases in the U.S. gross domestic product “haven’t significantly helped most Americans: The super-rich have captured most of the income gains.”

He maintains that an “accurate” calculation of U.S. GDP, “subtracting such costs as crime, environmental depredations, militarism and declining social trust—would actually show that growth in economic output has brought few, if any, real gains in welfare for American society.”

And if the growing income divide isn’t enough for you, Moberg points out that some economists have argued that the shorter work hours in Europe, by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, are part of what help keep Europe on the greener side of the United States.

Give Yourself a Break: Vacation Well, Live Well

If you’re just getting into the groove of your new job after graduating from college, we encourage you to commit to leading a balanced life, starting now. That means taking the vacation time you have coming and not working during your days off vacation if you can help it. When you take this time for yourself, you will more likely be happier, more productive long-term and healthier into your retirement years.

As Herbert Spencer said, “Life is not for learning, nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.” The translation? Work hard, study hard, and learn what you can in every situation, but don’t forget to live life well. And that includes enjoying those vacation days you have coming.

For all the information you need about student loans, go to www.nextstudent.com.

Student Loan Girl

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