Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago News

Teen anti-smoking campaign keeps it cool

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

Surrounding the dirt bike course that was the center of the AST Dew Tour in Soldier Field's parking lot last weekend was a village of marketing booths trying to get young action sports fans to do something: Drink more Mountain Dew or join the National Guard or shop at JCPenney.

But one booth was trying to get youth to stop doing something: smoking. It took a soft-sell approach toward the teens and preteens who strolled past.

"We don't want our message to be preachy," said Jocelynn Jacobs, assistant brand manager with Legacy, a nonprofit anti-smoking organization that developed the Truth campaign that targets youths ages 12 to 17. "We want to message to be like your older brother giving you advice."

With booths, or "Truth trucks," replete with video monitors and deejay decks, they got some attention. Kids crowded around the booth, clamoring for T-shirts emblazoned with facts about the dangers of tobacco. There were no brochures, no lectures, hardly any mention of ciggies at all.

Summer months are important to get the message out because that's when most young people take their first puffs, said Jacobs. The campaign, born a decade ago in response to the tobacco industry's marketing, attempts to combat the advertising efforts of big tobacco. The goal is to convince youths that smoking isn't cool and not smoking is.

There is evidence that the approach is effective, said Joel Africk, president and CEO of the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, a century-old not-for-profit that helps those with lung disease, promotes healthy lungs and assists those trying to quit smoking.

"Ninety percent of all smokers start as kids," Africk said. "If we can stop them before they start, that will have a big effect overall." The rate of teen smoking declined for many years, he said, but, "Around 2003 or 2004, it plateaued. We're trying to jump-start that so the rate declines again."

Communicating the message effectively is key to that, Africk said. Smoking's effect on the pocketbook is another significant deterrent to teen smoking, he said. Especially in Illinois, where the cigarette tax ($3.66 combined state, county and city taxes on cigarette sales) is the second-highest in the nation, behind New York.

Still, some 3,500 children light up for the first time each day in this nation, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. That adds up to more than 1.2 million new fresh-faced puffers each year.

A recent study suggests those new smokers could be hanging out at convenience stores and other retail outlets. Teens exposed to smoking ads at retailers are more likely to smoke, according to the study, by Stanford University School of Medicine and published in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics.

In the steamy Soldier Field parking lot last weekend, a group of peppy Truth campaign workers enlisted the young people in Simon says and a limbo contest. They persuaded one girl to spin a hula-hoop while collecting her friends' e-mail address. Male Truth campaign workers, sporting earrings and dreadlocks, buddied up to crowd members while their female counterparts managed to keep the attention of smitten boys.

True to their word, there was no heavy-handed preaching about smoking.

"We're not much older than these kids," said Sanni Youboty, 24. "We respect their opinions and decision-making."

It's hot out there

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

The mercury is rising, and before you reply, "Duh - it's July," keep in mind that heat kills more Americans every year than do hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods and lightning combined, according to AARP.

Temperatures are expected to hit 90 or higher every day through Sunday, and the National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory that includes Will County, saying the heat index - a measure of the combined effects of heat and humidity - could rise to 105 degrees. Kane County also issued an extreme heat watch for residents, and Cook County advised residents to limit outdoor exertion and drink plenty of fluids.

Since last summer had only four 90-degree days, here's a refresher on what to do:

When breathing isn't easy: Living with COPD

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

Alice Nulle of Woodstock has been attending regular rehabilitation sessions for five years, dealing with the effects of a disease that is the fourth-leading cause of death in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But she still spends time explaining what the disease entails to people she encounters.

"When you say you have COPD, a lot of people say, 'Well, what's that?' " Nulle said.

Of the estimated 24 million people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the United States, only half are diagnosed, said Eileen Lowery, manager of the lung health initiative for the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

COPD is a combination of two main conditions -- emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Individuals with the disease struggle to breathe and often develop a cough, wheezing and chest tightness, the conditions worsening with time.

"People don't notice the symptoms because they are kind of insidious," Lowery said. "They don't ask their physicians to test them for COPD, so they don't know they have it."

Stolen inhalers pose risk

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

From U.S. FDA:

The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use inhalers stolen from a Virginia warehouse after some of the pilfered medicine turned up in some pharmacies.

The stolen Advair Diskus inhalers (fluticasone propionate and salmeterol inhalation powder) were found recently - the first batch known to have hit the supply chain since the August 2009 theft. As the investigation continues, FDA officials warned the public that more of the stolen inhalers could still be on the market.

Used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the stolen medicine may itself pose a health risk, FDA experts say. The inhalers may have been stored at improper temperatures or humidity levels - or they might have been contaminated or lost potency.

More than 25,000 of the inhalers were stolen from drug maker GlaxoSmithKline's distribution center near Richmond, Va., last year. They are set to expire in September.

FDA experts are advising anyone who uses the Advair Diskus inhaler to check the label for the following lot numbers:
- Lot 9ZP2255 - NDC 0173-0696-00, Advair Diskus 250/50, 60 Dose
- Lot 9ZP3325 - NDC 0173-0697-00, Advair Diskus 500/50, 60 Dose

Patients who have inhalers with matching lot numbers should discontinue use and call GlaxoSmithKline's Customer Response Center at 888-825-5249. Consumers should also contact their physicians or pharmacists to obtain a replacement.

FDA is also asking the public to report suspicious or unsolicited offers for the Advair Diskus lots in question by contacting the agency's Office of Criminal Investigations.

Chicago's growing clean power campaign

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

From The Huffington Post:

How green is Chicago?

Thanks to a growing ward-by-ward grassroots campaign for clean energy, the Windy City has attracted the attention of national environmental and citizens organizations to ask that very question.

On Thursday, July 15th at Dvorak Park, Alderman Joe Moore and Dorian Breuer, of the Pilsen Environmental Rights & Reform Organization, will be joined by an unusually broad coalition of fellow aldermen, clean energy and health care activists, and over 50 Chicago organizations, along the Sierra Club's Executive Director Michael Brune and Greenpeace National Climate Director Damon Moglen to call on Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council to adopt the nationally acclaimed Clean Power Coalition energy platform.

Thirteen aldermen have signed onto Moore's breakthrough Clean Power Ordinance, which calls for reducing pollution at the city's two notorious coal-fired plants by 90 percent.

With one of the worst asthma rates in the nation, the Fisk Generation Station in Pilsen and Crawford Power Plant in Little Village--where nearly 50,000 tons of toxic pollution have led to atrocious health care rates over the past three years--were built before the invention of the Model T.

The CO emissions from the two plants are equivalent to the pollution of nearly 875,000 cars.

Over the past seven years, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO)has been leading "toxic tours" for researchers, journalists, politicians and city officials. LVEJO notes:

According to a report compiled by the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago ranks second among all cities in the country adversely affected by power plant pollution, leading to 855 premature deaths, 848 hospitalizations, 1,519 heart attacks and 23,650 asthma attacks. The report also states that according to EPA officials, fine particle pollution from power plants shortens the lives of 1,356 Illinoisans every year, citing Crawford and Fisk as two main pollutants.

Today's press conference brings Chicago's leading clean energy effort to the forefront of several national campaigns to transition away from fossil fuels. Says Lan Richart, with the Eco-Justice Collaborative:

The decisions by the national offices of Sierra Club and Greenpeace to make the Chicago Clean Power Campaign a priority are signs that not only is the campaign gaining momentum, but it is part of a growing recognition across the country that our addiction to fossil fuels is literally killing us. The on-going oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the recent mining disaster in West Virginia, the destruction of the Appalachian mountains by mountaintop removal coal mining and the poisoning of our air in Chicago should shake us to the core. How loud must our wake-up call be before we act?

 We are calling on Mayor Daley and the members of the Chicago City Council to demonstrate that they are serious about making Chicago a green city. Right now the Clean Power Ordinance is bottled up in the Rules Committee. With the entry of the national offices of Greenpeace and Sierra Club into the campaign, we are sending a message to our city leaders that the public call to clean up the power plants is growing and the issue is not going to go away.

For more information, visit the Clean Power Campaign.

Clean coal dream a costly nightmare

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:00:00 CST

Sold on a promise of cheap, clean electricity, dozens of communities in Illinois and eight other Midwest states instead are facing more expensive utility bills after bankrolling a new coal-fired power plant that will be one of the nation's largest sources of climate-change pollution.

As the Prairie State Energy Campus rises out of a Downstate field, its price tag already has more than doubled to $4.4 billion -- costs that will largely be borne by municipalities including the suburbs of Naperville, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and Winnetka.

The communities are locked into 28-year contracts that will require higher electricity rates to cover the construction overruns, documents and interviews show. Municipal officials told the Tribune they expect costs to soar even higher before the plant begins operating next year.

Then there are the environmental costs of the project, which was designed by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's largest private coal company, to burn fossil fuel from one of its nearby coal mines.

Though the company and its partners promote the plant as a national model for environmentally friendly "clean coal" technology, Prairie State will be the largest source of carbon dioxide built in the United States in a quarter-century.

Each year, it will churn more than 13 million tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, an amount equivalent to adding 2 million cars to the nation's highways. Most U.S. power plants emitting that much climate-change pollution date to the 1960s and '70s.

The pollution also could make the plant more expensive to operate. Climate and energy legislation pending in Congress would slap a price on greenhouse-gas emissions, requiring Prairie State's owners to spend hundreds of millions more a year. Local officials didn't account for those costs when buying into the plant.

EPA lags on setting some air standards, report finds

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:00:00 CST

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency is 10 years behind schedule in setting guidelines for a host of toxic air pollutants, according to a report from the agency's inspector general.

The report, which was released last week, found that the agency had failed to develop emissions standards, due in 2000, for some sources of hazardous air pollutants. These included smaller sites often located in urban areas, like dry cleaners and gas stations, but also some chemical manufacturers.

The inspector general also found that the agency had not met targets outlined in a 1999 planning document, the Integrated Urban Air Toxics Strategy, including tracking urban dwellers' risk of developing health problems from exposure to pollutants.

Some experts said the failures were persisting largely because the E.P.A.'s Office of Air and Radiation, which is responsible for regulating air pollutants, lacked the money needed to meet its deadlines.

In a written response to the report, E.P.A. officials also said budget cuts had made it difficult to meet their deadlines, noting that "air toxics support has been cut over 70 percent" since 2001.

In the past, the Government Accountability Office has found that the low priority for the air toxics program and limited financing were in part to blame for the agency's failure to stay on schedule.

Frank O'Donnell, the president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental watchdog group based in Washington, said the inspector general's report made clear that "the issue of breathing cancer-causing chemicals in city air is something of an orphan issue."

For example, the agency's last assessment of the risk of toxic air pollutants is based on emissions data from 2002. That analysis found that 1 in 28,000 people, or 36 in 1 million, could develop cancer from lifetime exposure to air toxics from outdoor sources. That number is an average, however, and people living in densely populated cities may face a higher risk.

The people most exposed, Mr. O'Donnell said, "are probably not out in the wheat farms -- they're going to be people living near where the bus depots are."

Jeffrey Holmstead, who was assistant administrator for air and radiation at the E.P.A. from 2001 to 2005, said that even though Congress increased the agency's budget when it passed significant amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990, the E.P.A. still did not have enough money to fulfill all its requirements.

"It's fair to point out that the E.P.A. has not met its statutory deadlines," Mr. Holmstead said. "But there are hundreds and hundreds of statutory deadlines that the E.P.A. hasn't met. Even though E.P.A. has a fairly large budget, it's not big enough to do everything the E.P.A folks are supposed to do."

In the past, Mr. Holmstead has represented semiconductor, aerospace and chemical companies as an environmental lawyer. He is now a partner at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, where his clients include oil companies and others in the energy sector.

James S. Pew, a lawyer with the environmental law group Earthjustice, said that the E.P.A. had the financing it needed, and that it undercut itself by moving money away from the division that specifically deals with air toxics. "This is a situation where the lack of resources is just not a valid excuse," Mr. Pew said.

Chicago health officials praise anti-smoking rules

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:00:00 CST

From The Associated Press:

CHICAGO - Health officials in Chicago are lauding federal regulations taking effect Tuesday that limit tobacco marketing to kids.

The Family Smoking and Prevention act includes new restrictions on the sale and promotion of tobacco. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin says the reforms end decades of tobacco industry deceit and targeting children.

The regulations include larger health warnings on smokeless tobacco. They also require stores to place tobacco products behind the counter, and ban cigarette marketing terms such as "light," ''mild," and "low-tar."

Dr. Bechara Choucair of Chicago's public health department notes that tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death. He says the act will help persuade people to avoid cigarettes and to quit smoking.

Joel Africk at the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago says the regulations will save lives.

'My purpose'

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:00:00 CST

From Northwest Herald:

Ann Baker never smoked.

It's a fact that the Cary resident feels compelled to clarify on a regular basis. That's because about two years ago, she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

"As you start to tell family and friends, people are very confused," Baker said. "The comments are, 'You never smoked, did you?' There's a lot of misunderstanding."

She said that even CT scan technicians would ask, "Are you a smoker?"

"It became almost a point of contention with me," Baker said. "I would say, 'No. I'm not a smoker, and what difference does it possibly make?' "

The conversations also gave her an insight into what it must be like for smokers who get the disease.

"It's no less devastating for them," Baker said.
"In fact, I feel worse, because they do feel the guilt and the shame."

And regardless of what led to the cancer, the odds never are good. For Baker, they're especially bad. In her condition, only 2 percent of patients live past the five-year mark.

"I've come to a place that recognizes ... we're here to do something good for the people that we leave behind," Baker said.

"So with my kids, my family, [I] make things count."

Baker first noticed her own symptoms during a walk for a different cancer -- the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. She was having trouble breathing and thought she had a cold.

After numerous tests and treatments without success, she had a lung biopsy performed; during the surgery, doctors discovered the cancer.

"I was shocked more than anything else," Baker said. "It probably took me two months before I could actually say the phrase, 'I have lung cancer' to someone because I just didn't believe it."

She's a come long way since then, though. Now as an advocate for awareness of the disease, Baker has raised money by doing half of the Hustle up the Hancock, become involved with the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, and met with legislators in Washington, D.C.

"It's sort of become my purpose," she said. "I have three kids, and I want there to be better research and treatments out there. I want there to be screening so they don't have to get this diagnosis so late."

Specifically, she'd like to see more money go to lung cancer research and screening ideas, because right now a lot of the funding goes to anti-smoking campaigns.

"The biggest belief is that if you just got people to stop smoking, lung cancer would go away," she said. "[But] there's got to be more research ... we've got to understand why lung cancer is occurring."

Joel Africk, president and CEO of the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago points out that in 2009, more women died in the U.S. from lung cancer than who died from breast, cervical and ovarian cancer combined -- 70,490 compared with 58,840, according to the American Cancer Society.

A lack of awareness of that fact is part of the reason his organization has started a campaign that targets women.

It features a pink butterfly and the slogan "Catch your breath."

"We don't want people to think of lung cancer as only affecting old smokers," Africk said. "Ann's story reminds us very vividly that lung cancer can strike any of us."

Lung cancer in women on the rise

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:00:00 CST

As doctors have substantially brought down the rate of lung cancer in men over the past three decades, they face a stubborn riddle: Why does it continue to grow among women?

A new study offers an intriguing possibility that the answer may involve estrogen.

The hormone estrogen is a possible culprit. Certain forms of estrogen are known to help create genetic mutations in cells and contribute to tumor formation in the breast. Recently, researchers found out that lung cells in both women and men also make estrogen, raising the possibility that the hormone contributes to lung-cancer development.

Margie Clapper and her colleagues at Fox Chase Cancer Center, a major research center in Philadelphia, set out to examine what would happen to the lung cells of female animals that were exposed to tobacco smoke. They wanted to identify early genetic changes in the cells?before tumors formed?that could be targeted in the future.

The goal is that one day these early genetic changes could be disrupted, preventing lung cancer from developing in the first place, says Dr. Clapper, co-leader of the cancer prevention and control program.

After placing female mice in smoke-filled chambers six hours a day, five days a week for three, eight or 20 weeks, they looked to see how material produced by genes differed in the lung tissue of animals that were exposed to smoke and those that weren't.

Researchers found differences in 10 genes around an enzyme called cytochrome P450 1b1, which is known to break down estrogen and tobacco smoke. The 1b1 enzyme activates cancer-causing agents in tobacco and converts estrogen to a more active form that appears to cause DNA mutations. Estrogen may, in essence, be adding fuel to the fire that occurs when lung cells are exposed to tobacco smoke.

The findings, published last week in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, "reinforce the role that estrogen is clearly a player and we need to look at it more closely," Dr. Clapper says.

Since only female mice were used in the study, it isn't clear how male mice?whose lung cells also produce estrogen?would react differently.

Dr. Clapper says that this estrogen pathway could be particularly harmful for women because they have higher levels of estrogen in their blood before menopause, and some may take drugs that boost estrogen, including hormone-replacement therapies or birth control pills.

The lab is now looking at what happens when hormone levels are boosted in mice that already have lung tumors, and also what hormones might do to damage cells even in a non-smoke environment.

The study "points to directions that we could take to either prevent or treat lung cancer," says Jill Siegfried, a pharmacology and chemical biology professor at the University of Pittsburgh who wrote a commentary, which accompanied Dr. Clapper's paper, on why the research is important. The research "also provides some public health information for women to understand what tobacco smoke is doing to their lungs and how it could interact with their natural hormones."

Some cancer researchers say that the rise in lung cancer cases in women is simply due to differences in men's and women's smoking patterns.