Tuesday, July 01, 2008

A couple of interesting and sad things

1) This obituary of Walter Sukacz, who was captured by the Nazis when he was a teenager.

Mr. Sukacz, a native of Jaskowicz, Poland, was seized by Nazis by the time he was 16 and sent to work on a forced-labor farm in Germany. He was liberated by U.S. soldiers in 1945.

He immigrated to the United States in 1949 and joined the U.S. Army before he became a citizen. He served during the Korean War in Germany, where he earned his grade and high school degrees.


Prisoner of the Nazis, became an American GI himself then served in Germany during a different war. That must have been really odd. And brave.

2) This piece from Match It For Pratchett about how bus stops can be soothing to those that suffer from Alzheimer's.

They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.


It's nice that this works but it wouldn't work for those who never had a decent public transportation system and were never in the habit of taking the bus. I wonder what would work for them. Fake Starbucks?

3) Story about patients poisoned with lead in their marijuana.

One package contained obvious lead particles (Figure 1); this strongly indicated that the lead was deliberately added to the package rather than inadvertently incorporated into the marijuana plants from contaminated soil. At this point, we involved the police, and a full criminal investigation was begun. Health authorities immediately started an anonymous screening program for marijuana users. After 2 weeks, 145 persons had used this service. A total of 95 of these persons had blood lead levels that required treatment (>25 µg per deciliter), and some of these persons had dangerous levels of lead (>80 µg per deciliter).


It's rather terrifying. The lead is absorbed by the respiratory tract which is a pretty quick route to the bloodstream. Luckily the police and the health system worked together and quickly and saved quite a few lives.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home