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• Mom's Smoking During Pregnancy Ups Preemie's SIDS Risk  

Babies born prematurely to women who smoked during their pregnancy may be at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) than premature infants born to nonsmoking moms, new research suggests.

The Canadian study is the first to compare the breathing reflexes of "preemies" born to smokers versus nonsmokers. The researchers found that these tiny babies were more likely to have impaired recovery from pauses in breathing if their mother had smoked during her pregnancy.

"Our study shows that preterm infants make incomplete and/or delayed recovery from interruptions in breathing," study author and neonatologist Dr. Shabih Hasan, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Calgary, said in an American Thoracic Society news release. "This has clear implications for their risk of SIDS."

The study, published in the first issue for September of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, involved 22 infants born spontaneously between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation

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• Cadmium Exposure Tied to Lung Disease  

The metal cadmium plays a major role in causing emphysema, and even low-level exposure through secondhand smoke and other sources can increase the risk of lung disease, a new study says.

The University of Michigan School of Public Health research also suggests that people with high levels of cadmium in their bodies may have as much as double the risk of developing a pulmonary disease such as emphysema or chronic bronchitis.

In this study, principal investigator Howard Hu and his colleagues tested the lung function of 96 men. Those with higher levels of cadmium in their urine had a reduced ability to exhale. This association was most evident among current and former smokers.

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Social factors key to ill health 

Social factors - rather than genetics - are to blame for huge variations in ill health and life expectancy around the world, a report concludes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has carried out a three-year analysis of the "social determinants" of health.

The report concludes "social injustice is killing people on a grand scale". . . .

The report, drawn up by an eminent panel of experts forming the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, found that, in almost all countries, poor socioeconomic circumstances equated to poor health.

The differences were so marked that genetics and biology could not begin to explain them.

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Health risk behaviors associated with lower prostate specific antigen awareness 

According to a study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, health risk behaviors such as smoking and obesity are associated with lower awareness of the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), which could lead to a lower likelihood of undergoing actual prostate cancer screening. Although previous studies have explored predictors of PSA test awareness, this is the first research to focus on health risk behaviors, such as smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, and excessive alcohol consumption. The study findings were reported in the August issue of The Journal of Urology.

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Scanning for a new cancer clue  

AT BRISBANE'S Prince Charles Hospital, Associate Professor Kwun Fong is evaluating what proportion of Australians' lung lesions are cancerous. It is the sort of research needed to underpin any future lung screening program.

The ratio may differ between national populations. Climate, tuberculosis and fungal infections can all influence the likelihood that a growth in the lung - often smaller than a centimetre - might be cancer.

That ratio will determine the worth of screening because a lot of unnecessary biopsies will result from tests which identify a preponderance of suspect nodules that later turn out to be benign.

Lung cancer kills more Australians - 7000 a year - than any other malignancy, yet has no screening program, apart from research trials.

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Court looks at pub's open shutter case  

IN A move residents fear will push more antisocial and violent behaviour on to the streets, the Coogee Bay Hotel - one of Sydney's biggest pubs - plans to replace the tinted windows in its ground floor bars with bi-fold shutters opening to the beach- front and Coogee Bay Road.

Smokers will now be able to linger longer on the street, chat to their mates sitting by the window, be passed a beer or two, and watch the big game on the hotel's giant TV screens.

This year the hotel has been nominated by the Australian Hotels Association for an award for outstanding community service, despite ranking second on a police list of the number of assaults

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Graphic anti-smoking ads hit target 

A national anti-smoking campaign has prompted nearly 200,000 people to kick the habit and should prevent about 55,000 deaths, new research has shown.

The hard-hitting 'Every cigarette is doing you damage' campaign, which started 11 years ago and cost around $9 million, is expected to save more than $740 million in health care costs.

Professor Susan Hurley, the author of the new report published online in the international journal Tobacco Control, said the first six months of the National Tobacco Campaign (NTC) in 1997 was the most intensive, and costly.

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• Marlboro man Stoner under fire  

AUSTRALIA'S world MotoGP champion and Young Australian of the Year, Casey Stoner, is being named and shamed in an aggressive campaign by anti-smoking groups which have labelled him as a "high-speed drug pusher."

They said images of the 22-year-old non-smoker and his bike covered in logos of Marlboro cigarettes while racing and in the media are sending the wrong message to his fans, particularly impressionable young children.

The anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health, the youth health project Smarter than Smoking and the Australian Network on Young People and Tobacco have written to Stoner and his management at Ducati calling on him to relinquish his sponsorship deal with tobacco giant Philip Morris.

The groups claim he is being used as a "Marlboro Man" to promote addictive, lethal products, and although tobacco sponsorship and advertising is banned in Australia, images featuring him plastered in tobacco logos can be readily seen in the media.

They have also written to the National Australia Day Council saying they are concerned that its Young Australian of the Year is actively promoting smoking to the rest of the world.

But in an emailed response last week, Stoner said that while he understood their views and agreed that children should not smoke, he did not believe Philip Morris's sponsorship of Ducati was aimed at young people.

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Casey Stoner is the new Marlboro Man and while he might have a lucrative contract with his sponsor, as a champion he is a role model to children and young people worldwide and he's being exploited as a high-speed drug pusher.
ASH chief executive Anne Jones, on Australia's world MotoGP champion and Young Australian of the Year, Casey Stoner--whose racing suit and motorcycle are covered in Marlboro logos.

Council turns the screw on landlord's smoking shelter  

A PUB landlord who put up a gazebo to provide shelter for smokers has been threatened with a £20,000 fine if he fails to take it down – because seven screws holding it to the ground means he needs planning permission.

Robin Watson put up the structure – which planners say is a marquee – at the back of the Shoulder of Mutton pub in York when the smoking ban came into force last year.

It has no walls, but council planners say that because the poles are screwed to pieces of concrete to stop it blowing away it needs planning permission.

The structure has been a hit with smokers at the pub in Heworth Green

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Cancer survivor tells students in Utah about dangers of chew 

CLEARFIELD - As the handsome star of his high school baseball team in the small town of Stewardson, Ill., Gruen Von Behrens always had a date come Friday night.

But after four years of chewing up to half a can of Copenhagen per day, he would soon hear children ask their mothers why "that man looks like a monster."

It took more than 40 surgeries to stop the squamous cell carcinoma that ravaged his lower face. Months after recovery, Von Behrens hated even the sight of a mirror. Today the 31-year-old activist travels the country in hopes that everyone sees him as the true, stark face of smokeless tobacco's dangers.

"Take a good look at my face," he told Job Corps students in Clearfield on Tuesday morning. "Take a good, long look. When it comes time for you to light that cigarette or take that chew, I hope you think of me."

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Pubs still too smoky despite ban  

WORKERS in pubs and clubs are still exposed to smoke pollution more than five times over the World Health Organisation's recommended limit, despite the introduction of smoking bans last year, a survey has found.

The survey was conducted by the State Government's Public Health Unit on 40 venues in Sydney and the Southern Tablelands and found air quality in outdoor smoking areas was "still poor".

More than half the outdoor areas had readings exceeding the WHO's recommended 25 micrograms of smoke pollution per cubic metre. Some were at more than five times that level.

The survey found pollution was wafting through to non-smoking rooms, 15 per cent of which had more than the acceptable level of exposure.

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Preventing increase in smoking is important 

Chief Executive Officer of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Barbados, Adrian Randall, said advocates and the relevant authorities need to continue to push this mode of thinking, because unless we apply the various articles of the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, that number will increase. . . . We have no ban on smoking in public places, we have no ban on advertising cigarettes although there is a gentlemen's agreement in relation to advertising in the media and so it doesn't happen, but there is not any law to prevent it happening, he lamented.

Randall suggested that as other countries throughout the Caribbean start to bring such laws into being, Barbados needs to follow suit or we will run the risk of attracting more attention from the tobacco producers.

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Newly-defined factors may prevent postpartum smoking relapse 

By shedding light on the factors that enable the other half to put down that cigarette for good, a study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could lead to programs designed to help women quit and stay quit.

According to the study, women with a live-in partner who shared some of the burden of child-rearing were more likely to remain smoke free, while women who were single mothers or who lacked the social and financial resources to deal with being a new parent were more likely to relapse.

"In the future we can look at these and other factors in women who quit smoking during pregnancy to assess who is at low or high risk of relapse," said Carol E. Ripley-Moffitt, MDiv, research associate in UNC's department of family medicine and the study's lead author. "We can then offer more intensive interventions for those at higher risk to address the physical, behavioral and social issues related to relapse."

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Company car smoke threat  

SMOKING in your company car could land you in court. That was the stark warning from environmental health bosses.

The ban on smoking inside public buildings and work vehicles took effect in Wales in April 2007.

But officers in Neath Port Talbot are still finding individuals and companies who risk being fined.

The law requires vehicles to be smoke free at all times if they are work vehicles or used to transport members of the public, either as part of paid or voluntary work by more than one person - regardless of whether they are in the vehicle at the same time.

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• Shisha smoking will be strictly regulated 

The regulations governing shisha-serving outlets will be strictly implemented in the next few months, but the municipal authorities in Dubai have not banned smoking of shisha during the holy month of Ramadan.

This was stated by Redha Hassan Salman, Director of Public Health and Safety Department in Dubai Municipality, after reports of a "ban on shisha" appeared in a section of the media.

"Shisha smoking in public places will be strictly regulated, and the cafes found not complying with the municipality rules will be soon ordered closed. The programme that we launched in November 2007 is to gradually regulate shisha smoking, and we have not initiated any ban on shisha outlets," Salman told Khaleej Times.

"We have also devised a new strategy to regulate the setting up of Ramadan tents where shisha is served. Only 4-star and 5-star restaurants will be allowed to set up tents and the activities conducted in the tent will be monitored," he pointed out. . . .

SHISHA REGULATIONS

Shisha outlets must be enclosed, and with proper ventilation system

Shisha outlets must display a cautionary notice prohibiting the entry of people below the age of 20

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