Smoke Signals March 1991 ... page 8
f Health Information
1991 SECOND ANNUAL
MINORITY HEALTH
CONFERENCE
"CHRONIC DISEASES: THE CULTURAL
ENVIRONMENT OF CHANGE"
MARCH 28 & 29, 1991
Keynote Speaker
'
'J, ; Wilma Mankillcf - Principal Chief
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ENVIRONMENT:
Area firms put plastic to reuse
The Statesman Journal
Salem-area residents will have a chance Saturday and
for much of this year to recycle plastic containers that
they otherwise might throw away.
Denton Plastics of Portland, the Girl Scouts, Thriftway
stores and other groups have teamed up for the new
program.
The recycling drive is for such products as milk and
juice jugs, cottage-cheese containers, foam cups and the
foam clamshells used to package some fast food.
The effort will begin Saturday, when plastics collection
depots will be set up in Thriftway parking lots in the
Willamette Valley and parts of Washington.
In Salem, plastics will be collected between 9 a.m. and
4 p.m. at Lancaster Thriftway, 255 Lancaster Drive NE,
and Frey's Thriftway, 4764 Portland Road NE.
At the Lancaster store, the collection will be repeated
during those hours on the last Saturday of each month,
at least through Nov. 30. Plastics will be collected
Saturday only at the Portland Road store.
The collection drive applies to plastic containers
marked with the numerals 2,4,or 6.
Many plastics manufacturers mark their products with
the numbers to show consumers which items can be
grouped for recycling.
The numeral, which appear inside a triangular symbol,
are embossed on the containers.
Containers must be free of food and soap residues; foil
or paper labels and liners must be removed. Lids also
must be removed, and containers must be crushed and
sorted by numeral.
The containers will be recycled into resins used in
flower pots and heavy-duty garbage bags.
The following numbers are embossed on sides or
bottoms of containers and indicate the type of plastics
from which the containers are made:
2) CLOUDYCOLOREDSOFT CONTAIN
ERS. Examples: Milk and juice jugs; dairy containers;
laundry containers; shampoo and conditioner bottles;
anti-freeze jugs; plastic bags clearly marked with this
symbol. (2 contains natural and colored polyethylene)
4) SEMI-FLEXIBLE LIDSTOPS. Examples:
lids and tops from 2 products. Also plastic bags clearly
marked with symbol. (4 is low density polyethylene)
6) TRANSPARENTBRITTLE OR WHITE
FOAM CONTAINERS. Examples: Include dairy
containers; bakery and meat trays; egg cartons, coffee
cups, fast food clamshells. Packing materials are
typically reused by shippers and should be taken to your
local express company. (6 includes polystyrene &
polystyrene foam).
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Heart Attacks More Likely
To Kill Women
Gannett News Service
Women have a significantly higher risk than men do of
dying from heart attacks in the hospital and up to a year
later, says a study published Tuesday.
Researchers report in the journal 'Circulation' that
women who have heart attacks are about 50 percent
more likely than men to die in the hospital. Women are
also 35 percent more likely to die within a year after an
attack.
In the past, doctors have considered heart disease to be
milder in women than men, said study author Dr. Philip
Greenland of the University of Rochester (N.Y.) School
of Medicine.
But this study, the largest so far comparing men and
women heart attack victims, shows that doctors must
"take women's cardiac symptoms very seriously and
treat them as aggressively as possible," he said.
Heart attacks are the No. 1 cause of death for U.S.
women, and they killed 245,100 women in 1988, accord
ing to the American Heart Association.
After following 4,300 male and 1,500 female heart
attack victims at 14 hospitals in Israel from 1981 to 1983,
Greenland and Tel Aviv University researchers found 23
percent of women and 16 percent of men died in the
hospital. Within one year, another 12 percent of the
women and 9 percent of the men had died.
The average age of the women was 67, about six years
more than the men. But "age alone does not explain the
higher mortality rates," according to the study.
Possible reasons:
More women had diabetes as a complicating
disease. Diabetes becomes increasingly common as
people age and gain weight. In the study, after diabetics
were factored out, women still had a significantly higher
death rate. But women with diabetes had the highest
risk of death.
Heart failure was more common among
women. Women and diabetics are prone to silent
ischemia, a painless condition that deprives part of the
heart muscle of blood. "One theory is that the women
with heart failure had previous heart attacks with-out
feeling them," Greenland said.
Study: Smoking Speeds
Deterioration of Arteries
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO Cigarette smoking speeds deterio
ration of arteries that supply the brain and quadruples
the risk of one kind of stroke, studies show.
A 50-year-old who smokes two packs of cigarettes a
day has artery damage comparable to a light smoker 10
years older, said Dr. Robert Dempsey, a neurosurgeon
at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
"The effect in that 50-year-old would be to take 10
years off his life," Dempsey said Saturday at the Ameri
can Heart Association's annual meeting on strokes.
In a separate study, researchers found those who
smoked a pack a day or less were four times as likely as
non-smokers to suffer from the form of stroke called
subarachnoid hemorrhage, which occurs primarily in
people younger than 65 and more commonly in women.
It has a high death rate.
Those who smoked more than a pack a day had up to
11 times the risk of subarachnoid hemorrhages, which
make up 7 percent of the 500,000 strokes suffered by
Americans each year.
Dr. Will Longstreth, the study's author, said that the
risk was especially high within three hours of smoking a
cigarette, and then it falls off gradually. But smokers
continue to have a higher risk of this kind of stroke even
years after they give up cigarettes, he said.
"If you stop smoking now you're looking at a 10-year
period of time until your risk is what it is in someone
who's never smoked," said Longstreth, a neurologist at
the University of Washington in Seattle.
His findings were based on a study of 149 stroke
victims and 149 people of similar backgrounds who had
not had strokes. He concluded that smoking is respon
sible for about 38 percent of all subarachnoid hemorrhages.