Health & Science

Proof that secondhand smoke kills

Many smokers griped bitterly when health departments banned smoking in restaurants, bars, and public buildings. But new federal research says that by protecting nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, these bans have spared tens of thousands of people from heart attacks and heart disease. The federal Institute of Medicine examined data from 11 studies in the U.S. and three other countries, and found that the number of heart attacks in communities that had adopted smoking bans dropped by a modest 6 percent in some cities to a dramatic 47 percent in others. Even brief exposure to the fine particles in secondhand smoke, researchers say, can constrict blood vessels, cause clots, and trigger heart attacks in people with existing heart disease. Frequent exposure to secondhand smoke can increase the risk for heart disease by 30 percent. “The evidence is now overwhelming,” Dr. Richard Hurt of the Mayo Clinic tells The New York Times. “Secondhand smoke kills a lot of people.” Still, some researchers questioned the conclusion of the federal report, saying that the wide variations in heart-attack reduction suggest that the data is flawed. But Dr. Stanton Glantz, a smoking researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, says that previous studies also provided clear evidence that secondhand smoke can damage and even kill nonsmokers. “This should shut up the people who have been whining and saying the evidence isn’t there,” Glantz says.

Say that again?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Extended exposure to loud noises can permanently damage one’s hearing, scientists say, but a surprisingly large number of Americans aren’t listening to the warnings. A recent study of more than 5,000 people found that nearly 700, or 13 percent, had some degree of hearing loss caused by noise. Men were three times more likely than women to suffer hearing problems, probably because they spend more time around what study author Hamid Djalilian calls “powered instrumentation,” including chain saws, leaf blowers, gunshots, and motorcycles. One unexpected hazard is the convertible automobile: A separate study found that driving in a convertible generates a noise level slightly above 85 decibels, the federal safety limit. “If you’re spending the whole summer driving around with your top down on the highway,” researcher Philip Michael says, you’re asking for long-term hearing trouble.

Chronic fatigue: Not imagined

Chronic fatigue syndrome, sometimes dubbed “the yuppie flu,” has long perplexed scientists. Its sufferers—1 million Americans, and 17 million people worldwide—complain of debilitating fatigue, pain, and depression, yet researchers had not identified an underlying, biological cause, leading some doctors to suggest that the syndrome was all in sufferers’ minds. But that skepticism may now start to fade. In a breakthrough study, researchers found that 68 percent of chronic-fatigue patients harbored a stealthy virus, called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, in their blood. Only 3.7 percent of healthy people had the virus. Like HIV, XMRV is a retrovirus, a class of viruses known to suppress the immune system and lower the gates to other viruses. Experts caution that more study is necessary to clarify whether XMRV actually causes chronic fatigue, or simply takes hold in people whose immune systems have been compromised for other reasons. Researchers are nonetheless excited at the prospect that a treatment, perhaps a mix of anti-retroviral drugs, might be at hand. “This establishes what had always been considered a psychiatric disease as an infectious disease,” study co-author Judy Mikovits tells The New York Times. “Hopefully this will finally make people change their attitudes.”

A spider that doesn’t eat bugs

Spiders are notorious predators, feasting on other insects caught in their webs. But one new species of spider is a vegetarian—the first

in 40,000 species identified thus far. Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping spider, lives in Costa Rica and thrives almost exclusively on the protein-rich tips of certain acacia plants. “These spiders may be the ‘Gandhis’ of the spider world,” Christopher Meehan, who confirmed the unusual diet, tells New Scientist. In an ecosystem swarming with spiders and short on prey, it makes sense that B. kiplingi switched to a food source that is abundant year-round. Meehan calls the spider “a fascinating snapshot into the evolution of a social creature as it transitions from hunter to gatherer.” But the spider’s life isn’t simple. Its food source is zealously guarded by ants, requiring the spider to watch, wait, and nab while the nabbing is good. Scientists who study spiders say it’s like finding a tiger that grazes on grass. “It is utterly surreal,” Meehan says, “to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant.”