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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 6, 2019)
T he C olumbia P ress December 6, 2019 3 Coffee is in our blood, scientists say B y s teVe l undeBerg Oregon State University Courtesy ODF Hideko Tamura-Snider with Oregon Community Trees board member Mike Oxendine, left, and Jim Gersbach of ODF. Seaside tree to be peace symbol Seaside and Tillamook have joined 24 communities across the state that plan to plant special peace trees to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The trees will be distributed by the Oregon Department of Forestry in partnership with nonprofit groups Oregon Community Trees and the Medford-based One Sunny Day Initiative. The seedling ginkgo and Asian persimmon trees were grown from seed collected from trees that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshi- ma and brought to Oregon by Medford resident Hide- ko Tamura-Snider. She sur- vived the bombing, which occurred 75 years ago on Aug. 6, 1945. Seaside plans to put its gink- go tree in Cartwright Park. “Thank you, people of Or- egon, for your enduring faith in the future, in the resilience of life,” Tamura-Snider wrote. The anticipated plantings “filled me with joy, remem- bering the long journey for both the trees and myself.” The 36 peace trees – 29 gink- gos and seven Asian persim- mons – will be planted across 16 Oregon counties, said Kristin Ramstad, manager of ODF’s Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program. Most will go to parks, arbore- tums and schools across the state. The greatest number will be planted in April as part of Arbor Week. The seedlings are not the first Hiroshima peace trees in Oregon. Some were plant- ed earlier this year at Oregon State University and Lake Os- wego. The plantings provide an opportunity for Oregonians to acknowledge the service, sac- rifice and suffering of people worldwide who were touched by World War II – both civil- ians and veterans. Tamura-Snider was 10 years old when she lost her mother in the atomic bomb- ing of Hiroshima. She went on to found the One Sunny Day Initiative in her adopted home of Medford. Later, she secured from Green Legacy Hiroshima seeds the group had collected from trees that survived the bomb. In spring 2017, Tamu- ra-Snider gave the seeds to Oregon Community Trees board member Michael Oxen- dine to germinate. He sprout- ed the seeds and the Depart- ment of Forestry agreed to find homes for them. ODF offered the seedlings at no cost. Recipients are re- quired to plant them in public places. Scientists at Oregon State University may have proven just how much people love coffee, tea, chocolate, soda and energy drinks. They’ve found it in our blood. Permanently. In conducting mass spec- trometry research, Richard van Breemen and Luying Chen worked with various biomedical suppliers to pur- chase 18 batches of suppos- edly pure human blood se- rum pooled from multiple donors. Biomedical suppliers get their blood from blood banks, who pass along inven- tory that’s nearing its expira- tion date. All 18 batches tested pos- itive for caffeine. Also, in many of the samples the re- searchers found traces of cough medicine and an an- ti-anxiety drug. The findings point to the potential for contaminated blood transfu- sions, and also suggest that blood used in research isn’t necessarily pure. “From a ‘contamination’ standpoint, caffeine is not a big worry for patients, though it may be a commen- tary on current society,” said Chen, a doctoral student. “But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of us doing this type of research because it’s hard to get clean blood samples.” The study was published in the Journal of Phar- maceutical and Biomedi- cal Analysis. In addition to caffeine, the research also involved testing pooled serum for alprazolam, an anti-anxiety medicine sold under the trade name Xa- nax; dextromethorphan, an over-the-counter cough sup- pressant; and tolbutamide, a medicine used to treat type 2 diabetes. All of the pooled serum was free of tolbutamide, but eight samples contained dex- tromethorphan and 13 con- tained alprazolam – possibly meaning that if you ever need a blood transfusion, your odds of also receiving caf- feine, cough medicine and an anti-anxiety drug are pretty good. “The study leads you in that direction, though without do- ing a comprehensive survey of vendors and blood banks we can only speculate on how widespread the problem is,” Ft. Clatsop visitor fees to go up Visitor fees at Fort Clatsop are going up beginning Jan. 1, the National Park Service announced. NPS has phased in the in- creases over the last six years as part of its attempt to stan- dardize entrance fees at sim- ilar parks. Visitors will pay $10 per adult, a $3 increase. The money will stay in the park and be put toward park im- provements, the develop- ment of new exhibits, in- creased accessibility, and trail expansion. In 2018, 286,000 visitors spent an estimated $16.9 million in nearby communi- ties while visiting Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, Fort Clatsop. The spending supported 235 jobs, $8.5 million in la- bor income, and $23.8 mil- lion in economic output, the park service estimates. said van Breemen, director of OSU’s Linus Pauling Insti- tute. “Another thing to con- sider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for. … How many others are in there too that we weren’t looking for?” The purpose of the study by Chen and van Breemen was to test a new method for eval- uating potential interactions between botanical dietary supplements and drug me- tabolism.