The smell on a smoker is unmistakable. So is the smell in room where smokers have smoked, even if it was yesterday or last week. Now, there’s a term for it — thirdhand smoke.  Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston came up with the term to describe the toxic chemicals that lay invisibly on surfaces and in clothing, which, they say, are especially harmful to children. Opening the window, it seems, is just not good enough to eliminate the risk.

More importantly, they say, is that most people don’t know that thirdhand smoke is dangerous.

You can read the article here in the journal Pediatrics, or read the story here published last week in the New York Times. 

The authors defined third-hand smoke as “toxins (that) take the form of particulate matter deposited in a layer onto every surface within  the home; in loose household dust; and as volatile toxic compounds that ‘off gas’ into the air over days, weeks, and months.”

Nothing is scarier than the thought of invisible toxins coating the hands of little kids. “They crawl play on, touch and mouth contaminated surfaces.  At up to .25 grams per day, the dust ingestion rate in infants is more than twice that of adults,” the article says.

The main point of the Pediatrics article was to find out how many people are aware that residual smoke, or thirdhand smoke, is dangerous.  In their survey of about 1500 adults, they found that 93 percent of them recognized that secondhand smoke is harmful to children. But only 61 percent believed that thirdhand smoke is a risk to kids. Nearly a quarter said they did not know whether it was harmful or not.

It’s not enough, they say, to just not smoke around kids. Parents should impose strict no smoking bans in their homes and cars to eliminate the risk, the researchers said.

I always thought the smell was reason enough. What do you do when you have smokers in the family? Tell them strip before they come in the house? Keep a bio-hazard suit on hand in the coat closet? Do you have any other ideas?

Question: What is the citizenship of a baby born on an airplane between Amsterdam and Boston? 

That’s what happened this morning, according to a story published on line today on the Boston Globe web site.  A Ugandan woman gave birth to a baby girl somewhere over Canada while on board Northwest Flight 59.

Two doctors sprang into action and laid her across a row of seats while two passengers held up blankets to create a delivery room. (One of the doctors, Dr. Natarajan Raman, is a radiology oncologist from Minneapolis.)

Her baby, a 6 1/2 pound girl she named Sasha, was born at about 9 a.m. when the doctors snipped the umbilical cord, the entire plane erupted in applause.

Answer: Canada

And Happy New Year!!    

You’ve heard about the virginity pledge, right? That’s when an adolescent swears to abstain from sex until marriage. The idea was created by an Evangelical Christian organization, and touted by other religious groups as part of the movement for abstinence only sex education.

By 1995 13 percent of American adolescents reported taking the virginity pledge. The federal government uses the number of virginity pledges as a benchmark to prove the success of the $200 million a year it spends on abstinence-only sex education.

It turns out that an abstinence promise made is a promise to be broken  — or  denied. Five years after taking the pledge, 82 percent of adolescents said they never made such a promise, according to a study published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers at Harvard followed 900 carefully matched teenagers for five years. The kids were equivalent in religious beliefs, educational and economic levels. 300 of them took the pledge and the rest did not. Five years later the only difference between them was the the pledgers were less likely to use condoms or other birth control, or be tested for STDs.

“Virginity pledges may not affect sexual behavior, but may decrease the likelihood of taking precautions during sex. Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially virginity pledgers,” the researchers concluded.

Glucosamine is out. Way out. Weight loss and low-impact exercise are in.

That’s the latest news from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons on how to best treat osteoarthritis off the knee. I know, it’s not much for people with deteriorating joints, but at the moment it’s all they’ve got.

The AAOS reviewed all of the available research on the cornucopia of treatments of OA for the knee, and found that most of them really aren’t worth the journal paper they’re printed on  — nor the millions of dollars that went into developing some of them.

Hyaluronic acid? (Think of it as a lube job for the knees.) Inconclusive. The surgeons can’t say whether it will help or be useless.

Arthroscopic surgery to clean out the floating junk and smooth out the rough spots? Out.

Knee braces? Out.

So what’s left? Over-the-counter pain killers, weight loss, thigh and leg strengthening, and moderate (low impact) exercise. And let us not forget the ice.

 Here’s a timely test for all  Minnesotans: What are the signs of frostbite? What do you do to treat it?  How cold does your body have to get before hypothermia sets in and you literally start freezing to death?

 Here are the answers to today’s pop quiz, courtesy of Dr. Doug Brunette an emergency room physician at Hennepin County Medical Center.

Frostbite: Your skin literally freezes.

 What it looks like: Frozen skin. It becomes hard and pale, and red and painful as it thaws.  When you get cold, your body responds by not sending blood to the extremities in order to preserve your core temperature.   In a -30 degree wind chill skin freezes after only a few minutes. Skin dies in two ways: At the time of the exposure and because of the lack of oxygen. 

What to do:  Immerse affected areas in warm water, about 102 degrees.   Get medical help if sores and blisters develop.   Â
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Hypothermia: You are literally freezing.

What it looks like:  Shivering, slurred speech, very slow breathing, pale cold skin, and fatigue.  Hypothermia becomes fatal when core temperatures get too low causing cardiac and respiratory failure.
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What to do: Medical help should be called immediately.  Remove the person from the cold, remove wet clothing, insulate the person’s body from the cold ground, monitor breathing, share body heat, and provide a warm, nonalcoholic beverage if a person is able to swallow.

What not to do:  Do not apply direct heat, massage the person, or provide alcoholic beverages. That could cause cardiac arrest.

 For those who haven’t lived here long enough to know, here are the ever sensible cold weather tips:

1. Always dress for the weather, being sure to cover ears, nose, face, and head at all times.Â
2. Wear mittens instead of gloves
3. Wear two pairs of socks and waterproof shoes to keep feet warm.Â
4. Clothes should fit loosely to avoid a decrease in the amount of blood supplied to legs and arms.Â
5. Do not smoke or drink because it can affect your body’s blood circulation.Â
6. Always travel with a friend incase help would be needed or something would happen.
7. Pay attention to the “real feel” temperature.  This temperature factors in the wind chill, which may be much lower than the reported air temperature.
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