Hand Sanitizer The New Vodka For Teens

There's a new trend among teens looking for a buzz, doctors say, and it surrounds an unlikely household item designed to keep us germ-free: ethanol-based hand sanitizer.

Teenagers are using it this stuff to get high, according to health officials. Poison control centers nationwide say reports are on the rise.

The big issue here is the alcohol content, says Dr. Robert J. Geller, a medical toxicologist and Emory University pediatrician.

He says these sanitizers "are actually products that are 60% ethanol which means they are 120 proof," and "if you drink 2 ounces of it, it's like drinking 3 ounces of 80-proof tequila."

In California, where word of the trend first surfaced, there have been reports of 60 teenagers exposed since 2010, says Dr. Cyrus Rangan, toxicologist and assistant medical director of California Poison Control.

In recent months L.A. County doctors noticed an increase in cases, so last week they asked the California Poison Control Center to run numbers to see if data matched their instincts.

But nationwide statistics haven't been compiled, so CNN asked the  American Association of Poison Control Centers check their database.

Turns out the number of cases around the country are going up too.

Last year there were 622 calls involving cases where teenagers reported exposure to ethanol-based hand sanitizer, according to the AAPCC.  So far this year, they've already received 203 calls.

The specifics of each case aren't known, but overall, "77% of teen exposures to hand sanitizers were oral; the rest were mainly the eye and skin," says Loreeta Canton, spokeswoman for the AAPCC.

None of the reports involving hand sanitizers resulted in the deaths of young people, although one 2011 report involved a teen "with major effects that were life-threatening," according to the AAPCC.

Also in 2011, there were 14 teens with "moderate effects"requiring treatment that were not life-threatening and 122 cases of teens with "minor symptoms" that were "minimally bothersome and generally resolved rapidly," the AAPCC says.

So far this year, poison centers have received hand sanitizer reports of one incident that was "life threatening or resulted in disability or disfigurement," one incident that "required treatment, but was not life threatening" and 48 which were "minimally bothersome and were resolved rapidly."

For teens there can be serious consequences, says Geller, from sedation, to vomiting, to slowed breathing, "it really depends on how much they take and how often they are doing this."

Dr. Jennifer Shu, a CNN consultant and Atlanta pediatrician, says this is not a new concept for teens, it's just a new product for them to try. She says, "when used the wrong way, a lot of these things can have unintended consequences."

Ethanol can interfere with normal body functioning and side effects can range from sedation,  loss of coordination, and reaction timing, warns Dr.Carl Baum, a pediatric emergency physician and a medical toxicologist. "Too much ethanol can lead someone to have dangerous drops in blood sugar," just like drinking too much alcohol.

Teens are being exposed through friends and finding recipes online to help make it more palatable, Rangan says. Some teens even add ingredients to separate the alcohol from the rest of the gel while some dilute it down.

Drinking hand sanitizer poses the same risks as drinking alcohol for kids, says Rangan. "Regard it like you would regard any kind of medication in your house and monitor the amount in your house." He suggests parents use foam sanitizers which might be a little less appealing for a teenager to use in a recreational way.

"I think it's just because of the easy accessibility," he says,  "teens who are showing behaviors of intentionally taking hand sanitizer in an effort to get the alcohol high need to be evaluated for why are they doing that, and is this a symptom of a larger problem of substance abuse."

Summary: Early and late teens having been takening hand sanatizer and drinking it to get there buzz. According to the amount of research done in Canada their have been over 203 recorded calls for students who have revived alcohol poisoning. This has become a daily routing for some young teenagers. While drinking Hand Sanatizer this can have a huge effect on your body. Some being: Geller, from sedation, to vomiting, to slowed breathing, it really depends on how much they take and how often the teen does this.

Opinion: I feel that there is no need for student to be getting a buzz in or outside of their school. If their have been 203 reported alcohol poisonings from this case. The school bored should really consider putting cameras beside the hand sanitizing stations or supervise the students before they take it. I find it absolutly ridiculousness that student want to get a buzz during the school hours. If they were old enough they could be charged with public intoxication. This is having a huge effect on our society. Why are they doing this? maybe is it because the older students are having a influence on them or peer pressure? 

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/27/hand-sanitizer-the-new-vodka-for-teens/?npt=NP1

Friday, April 27 2012

Toronto Schools Get Serious About Garbage 

On a recent Wednesday, a group of students at St. Henry Catholic School had a problem.

They were sweeping up the detritus of the day, and had nowhere to deposit their pile — a popped balloon, a broken pencil, and an orange peel.

Wednesdays are wasteless at the school near Highway 404 and Steeles Ave. Students and staff bring lunch in reusable containers, choose foods without packaging, and the garbage cans are tucked out of sight.

Since they take the zero-waste challenge seriously, the students each volunteered to take a piece of the trash home. While a burst balloon is not your traditional take-home project (and it still wound up in somebody else’s trash), it’s all about the conversation: changing small habits and hoping the lessons learned in an elementary school will spread into the community.

“It’s not that difficult, we have Tupperware and stuff,” Grade 6 student Sheena Yadao says of the weekly challenge. On trips to the grocery store, Yadao’s family looks for food with less packaging, since “reduce is the number one R,” she says.

Benjamin George, also in Grade 6, lives in an apartment, like many of his classmates.

“We don’t have green bins. Even if I take it home, I put it in the garbage. Of course I take it home because Wastefree Wednesday is absolutely no garbage,” he says.

Although the school has been a Certified Eco School for nearly five years, the latest push happened this February, when a man walked into Janice Rego’s Grade 5/6 class and started sifting through the trash. It was Principal Roy Fernandes.

“Snacks are what’s killing us,” says the energetic young principal, who has brought an environmental message to every school where he has worked.

Mrs. Rego’s class started doing research. They looked at how snacks were packaged, and invited corporations and environmental groups into their class to hear both sides of the story.

The students wrote to companies. They experimented and, after a somewhat stale snack in March, learned that the plastic bag that surrounds microwave popcorn isn’t as useless as they thought.

“That was a great lesson — OK, we get it, some packaging, it has to happen,” Fernandes said.

At an “environmental extravaganza” Friday, Mrs. Rego’s class performed a play written by Fernandes and some of his students back in 2002, when he was a teacher.

An announcer, played by Alex Wang, introduced all the characters with pithy lines. For example: “She’s powerful. She’s friendly. She doesn’t seem to want to get involved in this issue. She’s the government!”

(Fear not, disheartened bureaucrats. By the end of the play, the “government” had learned some lessons, had started charging an environmental tax on poorly packaged products and changed all Ontario cities to three-stream waste management systems.)

At the end of the assembly, Fernandes gave an impassioned speech to an increasingly squirming and recess-ready audience that touched on reusable milk containers and the uselessness of gasoline receipts

“I don’t know many people who have to go refund their gas. Maybe you’re keeping them for income-tax purposes, then no problem, put it on your credit card, your debit, it will show up,” he said.

The adults in the crowd laughed, but the tax reference went over the heads of the two girls playing patty-cake in the middle of the gym floor.

“At our school for the next five days, there are no garbage bags. What are you going to do if you’re me and every day on bus duty you have your apple core, what will you do?”

After the assembly, Fernandes said he told Mrs. Rego’s class they can put the cores underneath a tree because they will decompose. (As a school-wide initiative, apple-core mountains in the schoolyard aren’t ideal, he says.)

But waste is down. There is talk of a smaller dumpster. Maybe if the city brings the green-bin program into schools (and the city confirmed they’re working on those details) they’ll have a place for all those apples.

Summary: The schools in the greater Toronto area have been trying for the past years to become more environmentally friendly. More specifically st. Henry catholic school near the highway 404. They started doing no waste Wednesdays to reduce the green foot print. The number of schools doing this in the greater Toronto area have increased rapidly. They also got the students interacting with the food companies emailing them a letter to see their ecological foot print for a school research project.

Opinion: The Candian government already packs a lard amount of some useless and some non useless information into our school curriculum. With the grade 5 and 6 students learning more than they need to know I think is counter productive. They mentioned that some students are interested in conserving their foot print and the environmental. Well at the age of 10 in grade 6 how should students know what they are interested in and what there not interested in it probably changed every day. At a young age is when your brain is the most fully functioning and when you should pack all of the important information into their head, not fill them with useless information that will not benefit them into the future. 

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1169662--toronto-school-gets-serious-about-garbage

Friday, April 27 2012

Toronto buying new street cars. 

The City of Toronto’s surplus from last year is a whopping $292 million, almost $140 million higher than previously forecast, a city source says.

Most of the windfall, minus about $8 million earmarked for two funds, will be directed toward the outstanding bill to replace the TTC’s old streetcar fleet, the source confirmed Friday after word started to leak out ahead of a Monday announcement.

Councillor Peter Milczyn, a budget committee member, said he knew the surplus would be “substantially higher” than the $154 million estimated by staff when council approved the 2012 budget in January, but he hadn’t heard an exact figure.

“Council directed that the surplus be directed to capital purchases and specifically the new TTC streetcar order,” Milczyn said.

“That order (made under the previous administration) was about $750 million with no way to pay for it. I think we’ve identified about $200 million, so this (surplus) would leave us with $500 million to $600 million to find.”

Much of the surplus is thanks to Toronto’s hot real estate market and the land transfer tax that Mayor Rob Ford has vowed to scrap.

During January’s bruising budget debate, council defied Mayor Rob Ford and his allies by using $19 million in surplus funds to prevent a host of cuts.

Despite the vote to aim the rest at the streetcar order, councillors now trying to prevent other cuts, including closure of city-run zoos at High Park and Centreville, are likely to look at the latest windfall with interest.

Summary: The Toronto mayor had taken out 292 million dollars out of the yearly budget, and has has decided to spend it on new Toronto street cars. Their was a lot of disgusting about if they should or shouldn't spend it on the new street cars, some thought it was very unnecessary to do so. They assume that with Toronto's very high taxes it will be easy to pay off the debt of the brand new street cars. 

Opinion: Why fix whats not broken? the Toronto street cars are fine, they get people from point a to point b. They aren't the most comfortable things in the world however they are just like the subways, but they aren't getting redone. Personaly i dont think it is worth the time and effort to re due the street cars, how long are the cars going to be down for before people can start using them again. for 292 million dollars i think it is a awful idea. The Canadian government could definitely put that money to something more important.   

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1169839--city-of-toronto-surplus-surges-to-292-million-most-of-which-will-help-buy-new-streetcars

Friday, April 22, 2012 

Canada Gets Rid Of The Penny 

Canada is ditching production of the penny, saying it costs more to make the coin than it's worth.As of this fall, the Royal Canadian Mint will cease distributing Canadian pennies, though consumers will still be able to use them for transactions. The change was included in the country's 2012 budget released Thursday.The budget calls the lowly penny a "burden to the economy.""It costs the government 1.6 cents to produce each new penny," the budget says, adding the government will save about $11 million a year with its elimination.Some Canadians, it says, consider the penny more of a nuisance than a useful coin.Some retailers say they're worried about the change."Something that costs $7.99 looks cheaper than something that's $8," Wendy Butenschoen of Toronto's Essence of Life Organics told the CBC.Rounding prices will become the norm as the penny is gradually removed from circulation, the budget says.If consumers find themselves without pennies, cash transactions should be rounded to the nearest five-cent increment "in a fair and transparent manner," it says. Noncash payments such as checks and credit cards will continue to be settled by the cent, however.It says fair rounding practices have been respected in other countries that have eliminated low-denomination coins. The removal of one-cent coins in other countries such as New Zealand and Australia, it says, did not result in inflation.The budget urges Canadians to donate their pennies to charities -- or even throw more into the wishing fountain."I'm going to believe that people want to just donate four cents more, and that a penny will turn into a nickel," said Lisa Resnic, marketing director for Sherway Gardens, where coins thrown into the fountain are donated to charity.

Summary: Canada has cut back on the production of the penny, it makes perfect sense to stop production because they are not making a profit on it. Today it costs 1.6 cents to manufacture the penny with the stop of production the Canadian government will be able to save over 11 million a year. A number of other counties have followed our footsteps such as New Zeland and Australia.  

Opinion: If I was in charge of the production of Canadian money I would definitively discontinue the production of the penny, it is counter productive and a waste of money to continue the production. If you think about all the money Canada spends it will definitely benefit us as a country to get the 11 million dollars and put it towards something else. Plus if Canada will save 11 million it could bring down the overall value of the dollar. This change in wealth has pros and cons of the action. 

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/30/business/canada-penny/index.html

Friday, April 27, 2012