That's right...yet another thing in life we shouldn't eat, smoke, chew, or drink...snow. That's because snow contains bacteria according to the New York Times:

Raindrops and snowflakes don’t just form by accident. They usually grow on tiny ice crystals, and unless it is supercold, the crystals have to grow on even tinier particles called ice nucleators. Different particles like dust, soot and sulfate can be nucleators. Bacteria can do the job, too, particularly at temperatures closer to freezing (which is why some ski resorts add benign microbes to snowmaking water).

And even though we here in the San Fernando Valley don't get much of the white stuff, those of you from the lands of four seasons likely can remember sticking your tongue out as snow fell, or scooping up freshly fallen ice into your mitten covered hands....ahhhh.

More from the Associated Press:

Parents who warn their kids not to eat dirty snow (especially the yellow variety) are left wondering whether to stop them from tasting the new-fallen stuff, too, because of Pseudomonas syringae, bacteria that can cause diseases in bean and tomato plants.

The answer, of course, is moderation....licking a glove with ice crystals isn't too bad, experts say.

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My colleague Dana Bartholomew pushed hard to get city parks officials to release a report that found positive traces of lead at Chatsworth Park South, where several sports programs are held. The park has been closed for nearly two weeks. When city parks officials finally released the report on Friday (one week after they said it would be completed), they said testing would continue.

From the story:

The city closed the 80-acre park Feb. 14 after state toxic regulators warned of a positive test for lead at a former skeet range there.

An environmental consultant hired by the city found that one-third of the samples it took from the park two weeks ago contained lead at or exceeding health standards.

"If a child were to get that soil in their system, by putting it in their mouth ... it could have adverse health effects," said Paul Davis, environmental specialist for the Department of Recreation and Parks.

"Which means we need to take note and do something about it."

The consultant, California Environmental of Camarillo, found lead in 23 of 66 soil samples at or exceeding 150 milligrams per kilogram in 23 of 66 samples - the limit set by the California Environmental Protection Agency for residential and children's play areas.

The samples - taken from 4 inches to 1 foot deep on a grassy glade on the site of a former gun and skeet range up against the Santa Susana Mountains - tested positive for lead, Davis said.

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The good folks at LifeScience.com bring us this little nugget of information. Makes you want to go around the office and listen to your co-workers' voices, to see if it's true.

From the story:

If you want to have lots of kids, look for a Barry White instead of a Justin Timberlake. Men with a deep voices have more offspring, a new study suggests. Previous studies conducted by David Feinberg of McMaster University in Canada have shown that women are more attracted to men with deeper voices, judging them to be older, healthier and more masculine than their higher-pitched rivals. Men, on the other hand, go for women with higher pitched voices because they find them more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger-sounding. In the new study, detailed in a recent issue of the journal Biology Letters, Feinberg set out to see how that attraction to deeper-voiced men affected reproduction and the survival of offspring. "While we find in this new study that voice pitch is not related to offspring mortality rates," Feinberg said, "we find that men with low voice pitch have higher reproductive success and more children born to them."

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the "Well, duh!" category, here comes a story about how researchers spent their summer. There's no mention of Bonds in the study.

From Reuters:

Steroids can help batters hit 50 percent more home runs by boosting their muscle mass by just 10 percent, a U.S. physicist said on Thursday.

Calculations show that, by putting on 10 percent more muscle mass, a batter can swing about 5 percent faster, increasing the ball's speed by 4 percent as it leaves the bat.

Depending on the ball's trajectory, this added speed could take it into home run territory 50 percent more often, said Roger Tobin of Tufts University in Boston.

"A 4 percent increase in ball speed, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, can increase home run production by anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent," said Tobin, whose study will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Physics.

Tobin, who normally studies condensed matter and physics, wondered if professional baseball players who have recently been accused of boosting their performance with steroids really would benefit from using the drugs.

"If you look at other sports, you don't see radical changes in performance. No one is running a 6-second 100-meter dash, no matter what they are taking," Tobin said in a telephone interview

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A little lead with your lunch?

Lunchboxes distributed by the California Department of Public Health at health fairs are being recalled because they contain lead.

The lunch boxes, pictured here, say: "Eat Fruits & Vegetables and Be Active."
From the press release:

Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), today urged consumers to stop using lunch boxes, which have been distributed as CDPH nutrition educational items, after testing showed elevated levels of lead in three lunch boxes.

The canvas lunch boxes that showed elevated levels of lead were green with a logo reading EAT FRUITS & VEGETABLES AND BE ACTIVE. Approximately 56,000 of these lunch boxes have been distributed throughout California at health fairs and other events.

“CDPH will no longer use lunch boxes until such time as we are assured that every lunch box is safe. In addition to lunch boxes, we are assessing all of our health promotion items to ensure that they are safe,” Horton said. “We are urging Californians to not use these lunch boxes and keep them away from infants and young children

Posted by Susan Abram at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sales of five leading painkillers almost doubled in the last eight years, revealing that like that catchy commercial jingle "We haven't got time for the pain."

From the Associated Press analysis:

More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during 2005, the most recent year represented in the data. That is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.

Oxycodone, the chemical used in OxyContin, is responsible for most of the increase. Oxycodone use jumped nearly six-fold between 1997 and 2005. The drug gained notoriety as "hillbilly heroin," often bought and sold illegally in Appalachia. But its highest rates of sale now occur in places such as suburban St. Louis and Fort Lauderdale.

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like wine, dark chocolate, and tomatoes, there are multiple discussions about the benefits of green tea. But before you head out to Trader Joe's for your pack of Yogi, researchers say the Green Tea should be caffeine free.

Here's the story from Reuters:

Healthy subjects who received daily caffeine-free green tea extract capsules had an increased production of detoxification enzymes, which may provide some cancer-fighting benefits, study findings show.

"Concentrated green tea extract could be beneficial to those who are deficient in the detoxification enzyme and shouldn't be harmful for those who have adequate detoxification enzyme," lead investigator Dr. H.-H. Sherry Chow, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, told Reuters Health.

Genetic and environmental factors cause people to have varying levels of glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzymes. These enzymes may play a crucial role in helping the body defend against toxic and cancer-causing compounds, note Chow and colleagues.

Previous laboratory and animal studies found that green tea compounds, antioxidants called "catechins," activate these GST enzymes. Therefore, Chow's team investigated the effect that concentrated compounds from green tea would have on GST enzymes levels in 42 healthy adults.

Their findings are published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

For 4 weeks prior to the study, the non-smoking volunteers refrained from drinking green tea, taking supplements, or eating foods known to contain epigallocatechin gallate, a potential cancer-fighting antioxidant.

Over the next 4 weeks the volunteers took four capsules, each containing 200 mg of epigallocatechin gallate, every morning prior to eating. This provided the equivalent amount of epigallocatechin gallate obtained from drinking 8 to 16 cups of green tea daily, Chow said.

The researchers found that the detoxifying GST enzymes increased by 80 percent in the study participants with the lowest GST levels at the start of the study. Participants with medium or high GST levels had either no increase or a slight increase in GST levels.

The capsules used in this study were specifically made for clinical trial use. Chow cautions that commercially available green tea extracts are not required to meet the same strict concentration and purity standards.

Chow adds, "More clinical testing is underway to confirm the cancer preventive activities of green tea or green tea extract."

Posted by Susan Abram at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)