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SALT
We all know that too much salt can raise your blood pressure, but that's not all: it might give you stomach cancer as well. On the other hand, when you read the labels on most processed foods, the two main ingredients appear to be "salt" and "reconstituted cardboard" (you think we're kidding, right?); imagine what they'd taste like without the salt. |
SAN DIEGO
In a study of sixty-eight American cities, San Diego ranked eighth in terms of the amount of daily road travel that takes place in congested conditions. Time to head north? |
SAN FRANCISCO
Wrong, moving up the West Coast won't do you any good at all. San Francisco was second worst in terms of traffic, with almost half of travel taking place in congested conditions. |
SAND
Workers in the industrial sand industry risk kidney disease as a result of exposure to silica. Your neighborhood sandbox is probably fairly safe, though, if you could only convince the woman next door that her toddler really does still need his diapers. |
SCHOOLS
If your kid claims he's allergic to school, he may actually be right. Two million children are allergic to foods served in school cafeterias, including milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, soy, and fish and many others suffer asthma and allergy attacks due to substances found in classrooms, including chalk dust, dust mites, animal dander from class pets or pet hair on other students' clothing, pollen, and mold. And don't count on their allergy medicine to solve the problem: in a recent study, half of school nurses reported errors in providing medications to students in their schools over the previous year. (As far as we could tell from their responses—"Duuuude!"—the students didn't have any problem with this.) |
SCHOOLS, SECURITY MEASURES IN
Security measures in schools may make students feel less secure. They could also be a threat to students' rights through introduction of surveillance cameras, backpack searches, drug tests, dress codes, and restrictions on language. We're not in Norman Rockwell country anymore, Toto.... |
SCHOOLMATES
Three high school boys in five said they could get a gun if they wanted to, and one boy in five said he had taken a weapon to school during the year before a recent study. But then, five out of five high school boys will say just about anything they think makes them sound macho, so go figure. |
SCOOTERS
Accidents involving foot-propelled scooters are increasing rapidly: more than seven thousand people per month (one-fourth of whom were less than eight years old) required emergency-room care after such accidents toward the end of 2000. You have to wonder about the other three-fourths. |
SCUBA DIVING
Scuba diving can quintuple your risk of ischaemic brain lesions. No, we've never heard of them either, so we figure the risk can't have been too high to start with. Hang on to the wet suit. |
SEA, SWIMMING IN THE
If you're swimming in the sea, you have one chance in twenty of becoming ill from sewage contamination even when the water quality has been defined as "acceptable." (The Environmental Protection Agency Dictionary defines "acceptable" as "adj. We threw a match in the water and it didn't catch fire.") |
