Drug Medical Information

CLEANING UP YOUR ACT: TENNIS, ANYONE?

To illustrate how insidious these dangers have become, the chemicals in your 'tennies' may be courting trouble. Sport shoes made with certain kinds of sponge-rubber insoles can lead to itchy feet, says Purdue University pharmacology professor Jerry McLaughlin. The culprits are two chemicals, mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) and dibenzothiazyl disulfide (DBTD).
"Many potential victims of tennis-shoe dermatitis could be spared distress if we can only persuade manufacturers to delete those harmful chemicals," McLaughlin says. Meanwhile, he proposes that toxic compounds should be listed on the shoe box.
Is there no safe placePIs every home a risk-ridden castle? What about on-the-job dangers? How secure are you at your office?
As you might have guessed, your nine-to-five world is also perilous. More than a dozen types of indoor pollutants have been found common in 'sick' office buildings. According to the World Health Organization, up to thirty percent of new and remodeled office buildings cause health problems.
For starters: carbon monoxide fumes seep in from underground parking garages; furniture, carpet, upholstery, insulation and other construction materials emit formaldehyde; filthy heating, ventilating and air-conditioning ducts often crust over with chemical pollutants and volatile organic compounds.
The unrelenting attack by toxic chemicals is cumulative. As the assault builds, it often buckles natural human defenses, laying the groundwork for free radical chain reactions. The result is health problems ranging from chronic fatigue to emotional distress, from allergies to asthma, from heart disease to cancer.
To make matters worse, environmental researchers report countless varieties of bacteria infect office building air ducts. To name but a few: stephyloccocus and streptococcus (common causes of skin, throat and eye infections), legionella (which can cause fatal pneumonia-like attack), aspergillus, cladoosporium, penitillium and phoma (implicated in hay fever and asthma).

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