Technology addiction - how should it be treated?

 

CrackBerry is a nickname for the BlackBerry handheld device. The nickname reflects the compelling nature of the BlackBerry, which allows the user to get and send email messages anywhere with wireless coverage. (The "Crack" part of the nickname is a reference to the highly-addictive street drug.)

  Webster's New World College Dictionary selected "CrackBerry" as its New Word of the Year for 2006.

MNT - Hourly Medical News Since 2003
Technology addiction - how should it be treated?
Last updated: Tuesday 1 September 2015
 

To what extent technology addiction or Internet addiction can be considered a genuine medical disorder is contentious. The term has been in popular use since the mid-1990s but is still not fully recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Now, as technology addiction clinics open across many countries in an attempt to ween citizens off their smartphones and computers, we look at some of the arguments surrounding this most modern of addictions.

Earlier this month, India became the latest country to sign up to what some concerned nations are depicting as a war on an addiction that has their youth in its grip. In Bangalore, India's "silicon capital," the country's premier mental health hospital has opened its first "technology de-addiction clinic."

In doing so, India has joined South Korea, China, Taiwan and Singapore in using dedicated technology addiction clinics to confront what many Asian-Pacific cultures consider to be a growing public health problem.

This picture is becoming a sign of the times. But, is addiction to technology becoming a genuine problem?

Doctors at the Bangalore clinic, run by the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (Nimhans), told The Indian Express that, typically, the patients being referred are children whose parents are concerned either by a sharp academic decline or their child withdrawing from family interactions.

"Parents lament that their son or daughter is spending far too much time on the smartphone, or posting numerous photos on Facebook, or complaining of anxiety, loneliness and boredom when denied use of the device," Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma, one of the doctors running the Nimhans clinic, told the paper.

The symptoms and nature of this perceived addiction vary from case to case but hinge around a perceived excessive engagement with a user's smartphone, the Internet or social networking sites that comes at the expense of their mental well-being. Persistent checking of instant messaging apps and frequent changing of status updates - as well as the notorious uploading of "selfies" - are linked in addiction cases to insomnia, depression and social withdrawal.

As these kind of treatment centers are yet to reach many Western countries, the act of admitting a child to a clinic for spending too much time on Facebook or playing with their smartphone may sound excessive.

However, in India, the launch of the clinic appeared timely - in the same week the Nimhans center opened, Indian newspapers were reporting a case of a 13-year-old who hanged herself after her mother asked her to delete her Facebook account.

Schools concerned about the popularity of texting, selfies and multi-player online games have also been seeking help from the clinic. Some have asked for Nimhans staff to train their student counsellors, or hold awareness camps and screening and rehabilitation programs for addicted students.

A year-long study by the Indian Council for Medical Research published in 2013 corroborates the parental and educational concerns, claiming that among its 2,750 participants there was an "alarming" rate of technology dependence.


Technology addiction 'epidemic' in Asia-Pacific and the treatment response

The Asia-Pacific region - home to the what are considered the "gold star" Internet de-addiction centers and treatment programs - is said to boast the world's highest level of smartphone penetration, with Singapore and Hong Kong at the top, according to media monitoring firm Nielsen's 2013 report.

In Singapore, 87% of a population of 5.4 million own smartphones. By contrast, the US has a smartphone prevalence of 65% - which is considered low by the Asia-Pacific standard. Citizens of Singapore are also more indulgent users of social media, spending an average of 38 minutes per session on Facebook - about twice as long as the average American session.

Singapore has been the site of some of the world's most pro-active technology addiction campaigns. A major "cyber wellness" education program targeting pre-school children is about to be launched, and the "Put it on friend mode" campaign from Nanyang Technological University - which encouraged smartphone users to put their phones away while with loved ones - apparently drew major support.

Medical News Today asked Dr. Adrian Wang, a psychiatrist at the Gleneagles Medical Centre in Singapore, why he believes social media use has twice the impact in that country compared with the US. He considers the problem to be largely one of access to technology from an increasingly young age.



"Many young Singaporean kids already have access to a smartphone or device," Dr. Wang says. "The habit grows from there."

"Many Singaporean kids - from as young as 7 or 8 - already have access to a smartphone or device," he says. "The habit grows from there. By their teens, most kids are pretty tech-savvy, and a combination of peer influence (everybody's on Facebook or Whatsapp) and ease of access (cheap mobile devices) means everyone's glued to their smartphone at some point of the day."

A standard treatment program at one of the dedicated technology addiction clinics in Singapore is based around cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Dr. Wang explains that the first step is to identify triggers for excessive Internet, social media or technology use - such as boredom or stress. Next, learned automatic responses - such as using the smartphone to relieve anxiety - are challenged and reversed.

"At a deeper level, exploring their thoughts and beliefs about anxiety and how they handle it is crucial," he says. "Like dealing with an addictive behavior, it's a long process and there may be ups and downs before long-term improvements are achieved. Medications are rarely used."

 

 The US and the origins of 'Internet addiction disorder'

CBT is also the cornerstone of the therapy offered by Dr. Kimberley Young, the leading Internet addiction therapist and author in the US. Dr. Young founded the netaddiction.com website in 1995 - the same year that the phrase "Internet addiction disorder" was coined in an essay by the New York-based psychiatrist Dr. Ivan Goldberg.

Dr. Goldberg's "Internet addiction disorder" was actually a hoax - he was attempting to satirize the the Amerlcan Psychiatric Association's psychiatry textbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), by applying criteria from DSM's gambling addiction to the Internet - which was something of a novelty in 1995.

But many readers of Goldberg's essay took the proposition seriously, with some Internet early adopters posting serious accounts of their own perceived addiction online and informal Internet addiction groups springing up on university campuses.

Dr. Young was arguably the first psychiatrist to take Goldberg's premise of Internet addiction seriously and mounted a campaign for the disorder to be included in the next edition of the DSM.

It took until 2013 and the publication of DSM-5 before an Internet-related disorder - "Internet gaming addiction" - was included. "Which is a major achievement," Dr. Young told us.



"We also don't have government-based health care, so in the US any new disorder is more of a grass roots effort to get it established," Dr. Young says.

"I see this as the normal development for the DSM," she reasons. "It takes years of research to establish new disorders. Just look how long substance dependence - such as alcoholism - or pathological gambling or eating disorders took to get in the DSM. Plus all the research done on Internet addiction used a variety of methods and measurements, so it was unclear if we were all studying the same phenomenon."

The inclusion of an Internet-related addiction in the DSM may encourage psychiatrists to diagnose patients with a form of "Internet addiction" - a labeling that is still regarded as contentious by some Western mental health professionals.

"We have been lagging behind other countries," Dr. Young told us. "I think US culture is conservative. The answer is that simple. It is more of a cultural issue than a clinical issue. The problem is real but how countries choose to address it will vary."
However, she also describes resistance toward the labeling of new disorders from US health insurance companies, who are keen to limit the number of conditions that they have to reimburse.

"We also don't have government-based health care, so in the US any new disorder is more of a grass roots effort to get it established," she adds.

Dr. Young believes that what is known as the South Korean "Master Plan" is the global leader for prevention and treatment of Internet addiction. "They have by far the most comprehensive plan," she gushes, "even over China, it was quite impressive."


Technology addiction diagnosis
China itself has over 300 Internet addiction centers. In 2007, concern from China over a report stating that 13.7% of its youth (about 10 million teenagers) met the criteria for Internet addiction disorder led to the implementation of laws discouraging more than 3 hours of daily online gaming.

However, in February of this year, the state broadcaster CCTV claimed that 24 million young Chinese people are "addicted" to the Internet.

This raises the question of whether Chinese attempts to control the epidemic via treatment centers and regulations have failed to the extent that the problem has more than doubled in 7 years, or if there is a political motivation for China's mass diagnosis of net addiction. China, after all, is a state with a notoriously censorial approach to the Internet, whose citizens have largely been banned from accessing social media since activists used Facebook to co-ordinate protests against the republic in 2009.

Other professionals have suggested, however, that prevalence of Internet addiction is simply harder to measure in Western states than in Asian countries, and so is less visible.

For example, Dr. Jerald J. Block, who campaigned for Internet addiction to be included in DSM-5, wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry that, "unlike in Asia, where Internet cafes are frequently used, in the United States games and virtual sex are accessed from the home. Attempts to measure the phenomenon are clouded by shame, denial and minimization."

In the second part of this article we look at why a standalone diagnosis of 'Internet addiction' or 'technology addiction' may be unhelpful.

Why a standalone diagnosis of 'Internet addiction' may be unhelpful

In November 2012, a study into Internet addiction among European youths from researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the UK proposed a different take on the concept of "Internet addiction." Rather than view problems related to Internet use as "addiction," the researchers employed the term "excessive use" to describe patterns of "repetitive, compulsive and uncontrolled" use.
The authors reasoned that where Internet use is blamed for declining school results in children or increased family tension, "it is not at all clear whether excessive Internet use is the cause of these problems - it could be a symptom or a consequence of these or other underlying troubles."

 LSE researchers suggest that a specific "addiction" to the Internet is less prevalent than is generally feared.

 

The LSE team applied the five basic components of Internet addiction, as defined by the British psychologist Dr. Mark Griffiths, to the participants in their study. They asked the children how often they experienced the following:

1. '"I have gone without eating or sleeping because of the Internet"
2. "I have felt bothered when I cannot be on the Internet"
3. "I have caught myself surfing when I am not really interested"
4. "I have spent less time than I should with either family, friends or doing schoolwork because of the time I spent on the Internet"
5. "I have tried unsuccessfully to spend less time on the Internet."

They found that very few participants experienced all five components, which suggested to the researchers that a specific "addiction" to the Internet is less prevalent than is generally feared.
However, the researchers did find a relationship between excessive Internet use and problematic online and offline behavior. These include psychological and emotional difficulties, drinking alcohol and substance abuse.
The LSE researchers argue that rather than pinning an "addict" label to children who use the Internet excessively, children's engagement with technology should be understood within the wider context of their everyday life.
They write:

"Psychological approaches suggest that people use the Internet excessively to compensate for social or psychological difficulties, and deficits in personal well-being in terms of their everyday offline life. Studies have linked sensation-seeking (a tendency to pursue excitement and sensory pleasure), loneliness and emotional problems (such as depression and low self-confidence) to excessive Internet use."

Therefore, children who are psychologically vulnerable are more likely to engage in excessive Internet use because they are trying to compensate for problems in their offline lives. This is relevant to how psychologists or counsellors approach treatment, because "the child may not see their Internet use as a problem but as a positive, coping response to other social, emotional and psychological challenges in the child's life."

We put this to Dr. Wang, who broadly agreed with the LSE's findings. He told us:

"I am generally not in favor of a standalone 'Internet addiction' diagnosis, and I agree that it is more a symptom of a larger problem - anxiety, depression, boredom, self-esteem issues to name a few - than an illness itself. Making it a DSM diagnosis 'medicalizes' the problem."

"However," he adds, "there are individuals with addictive personalities who may be more vulnerable to developing such an addiction. It's a combination of factors - an addictive personality plus a trigger (e.g., anxiety or depression) snowballing to full-blown addiction symptoms."

Although we are now nearing a 20th anniversary of Dr. Goldberg's Internet addiction disorder hoax, it seems that clinicians are still largely divided on the validity of such a disorder, and, if it does exist, what the best way of approaching it might be.

But it is not without some irony we note that, at the time of writing, a temporary Facebook outage lasting just 20 minutes has plunged users of social media into turmoil, with broadsheet newspapers going as far as to live-blog the downtime.

"If anything," writes the technology website Ubergizmo, "this incident only highlights our addiction to the social network."

Medical News Today recently reported on a study that suggested cell phone addiction is becoming an increasing concern in high school and college students.



Written by David McNamee
Link:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278530.php

 
Technology addiction - how should it be treated?

Recommended related news

Are you addicted to shopping?
Medical News Today, 2015
What is psychology? What are the branches of psychology?
Medical News Today, 2015
Is Internet Addiction Due To A Genetic Mutation?
Medical News Today, 2012
Internet Addiction Linked To White Matter Differences In Teen Brains
Catharine Paddock PhD, Medical News Today, 2012

Author Slammed Over Claims Technology Harms Young Brains
Megan Brooks, Medscape, 2015
Internet use among older adults: association with health needs, psychological capital, and social capital.
Namkee G Choi et al., J Med Internet Res, 2013
EADV: Spotlight on alexithymia in psoriasis
BRUCE JANCIN, Dermatology News
EADV: Spotlight on alexithymia in psoriasis
BRUCE JANCIN, Clinical Psychiatry News, 2015



Powered by TrendMD

References
Additional information
Citations


First tech de-addiction clinic opens; experts see ‘tip of iceberg’, Saritha Rai, The Indian Express, accessed 20 June 2014.

Excessive internet use among European children, David Smahel, et al., London School of Economics, accessed 20 June 2014.

Singapore grapples with internet addiction, Dunya News, accessed 20 June 2014.

Issues for DSM-V: internet addiction, Jerald J. Block, Am J Psychiatry, accessed 20 June 2014.

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.

For more information, please read our terms of use.



Spotlight on: Psychology / Psychiatry


What Is Psychology?
An introduction to psychology, the science of the mind and behavior. Find out about the origins, the branches of psychology and how psychologists study the mind.


MediLexicon International Ltd, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.




 

Caffeine Makes For Busy Bees, Not Productive Ones

Caffeine Makes For Busy Bees, Not Productive Ones

"A caffeinated bee is a busier bee. It’ll work harder to find food, and to communicate the location of said food to other bees. It will, however, misjudge the quality of the food it finds, and so make its colony less productive. The irony of writing about this as I sip an unwisely strong espresso at 10 pm is not lost on me." (Image: Anand Varma)





 http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/15/how-plants-manipulate-bees-with-caffeine/

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary

 
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary

 by Michael Pollan

Synopsis

document PDF


Following close on the heels of the very successful publishing of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the release of the movie Food Inc., Michael Pollan’s latest book,In Defense of Food, is one that attempts to address, in an even simpler way, the question of what we “should” eat. He examines that question in depth, trying to navigate through the supermarket, the diet industry, the health food industry, and every other place where we find and choose food.

The book is not a guide to certain foods that will make you healthy but much more of an examination of both the philosophy and the science of what food has become in the United States. Pollan takes the stance that our amazingly complex approach to food and food products is very likely getting us into more trouble than it is saving us from.

The book grew out of a 2007 article titled “Unhappy Meals,” which was published in the New York Times Magazine. Like in his other works, Pollan’s description of the issues is thorough and couched in a great deal of anecdotal and well-researched evidence that help to move along the discussion. He examines in detail the way that we have constructed an approach to food that he labels “nutritionism,” an approach that focuses on eating “nutrients” rather than simply food.

Pollan follows the rise of this outlook from its inception to its current state and describes many of the effects. He describes the low-fat craze (now apparently being debunked) to the craze for fiber. He also examines the basic idea that we look at food as a compilation of nutrients rather than as something edible. His basic premise is that we would likely be better off ignoring most (if not all) of food science and, as he counsels us, simply to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”

Pollan writes that he has given away the entire story in the first line, but again, as he did in Omnivore’s Dilemma, he continues in great detail and with an intriguing style into what that means and how it goes from a simple to a very complex question.

The second and third portions of the book are a further examination of how our eating culture became what it is. Pollan then provides a very straight-forward examination of the ways to escape from the negative aspects of what he calls “The Western Diet.”

The book has already seen relatively wide commercial and critical success. Published in 2008, it rose to the top of the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction and stayed at the top for six weeks.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food starts with a broad sketch of a key social change: how control over what families ate shifted from cultural factors, such as mothers and traditions, to marketing and the food industry. The result is that more health claims are made for food than ever before—but people are less healthy. The goal of In Defense of Food is to analyze the reasons for this seeming paradox. As Pollan does so, he makes other arguments as well, such as the idea that people should spend less time worrying about health and food and that the current Western diet makes people sick.

The body of the book is divided into three related sections. Part I, "The Age of Nutritionism," analyzes the scientific ideology called nutritionism. Part II, "The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization," applies the information presented in the first part to widespread issues of public health. In Part III, "Getting Over Nutritionism," Pollan focuses on the personal level, and he gives specific advice for what people should and shouldn't eat.

Part I: The Age of Nutritionism

"The Age of Nutritionism" argues that "food" in the purest or most traditional sense has disappeared from groceries in recent years and is replaced by "nutrients." The roots of this transformation are traced to nineteenth-century scientists William Prout (who identified protein, carbohydrates, and fat as the core components of food) and Justus von Liebig (the German chemist who discovered the role of minerals, or micronutrients). This led to the invention of vitamins and to increasing prestige for nutrition science.

Throughout the twentieth century, scientific understanding of nutrition and health developed new theories, such as the lipid hypothesis, which argued that increased consumption of fat and cholesterol were contributing to heart disease. In 1977, nutrition science received a major push from the American government when a Senate committee tasked with addressing health concerns developed its first dietary guidelines. These recommended eating less meat and dairy, but under pressure from lobbyists, the government weakened this recommendation. In part to avoid angering powerful lobbies and in part due to scientific trends, these guidelines began to speak about nutrients rather than food.

The term nutritionism was created by Gyorgy Scrinis in 2002. It refers to the fact that contemporary understanding of nutrition is more like an ideology than a science. Its core belief is that the individual nutrients are the essence of food. Because no one can see nutrients, this belief positions scientists as essential guides for the daily activity of eating. Like other ideologies, nutritionism divides its world along black-and-white lines: good nutrients and bad nutrients. However, there is ongoing debate about which nutrients go in which categories. Nutritionism is very useful for food manufacturers because they can now hype food as improved and healthier because they have added specific nutrients to it. It also allowed food manufacturers to finally dispel a labeling law from 1938, which had required any artificial food to be labeled as "imitation." After all, if nutrients are the essential elements of...



Start your free trial with eNotes for complete access to this resource and thousands more.



Save time with thousands of teacher-approved book and topic summaries.















In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary - eNotes.com 
http://www.enotes.com/topics/in-defense-of-food
'via Blog this'

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary

 
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary

 by Michael Pollan

Synopsis

document PDF


Following close on the heels of the very successful publishing of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the release of the movie Food Inc., Michael Pollan’s latest book,In Defense of Food, is one that attempts to address, in an even simpler way, the question of what we “should” eat. He examines that question in depth, trying to navigate through the supermarket, the diet industry, the health food industry, and every other place where we find and choose food.

The book is not a guide to certain foods that will make you healthy but much more of an examination of both the philosophy and the science of what food has become in the United States. Pollan takes the stance that our amazingly complex approach to food and food products is very likely getting us into more trouble than it is saving us from.

The book grew out of a 2007 article titled “Unhappy Meals,” which was published in the New York Times Magazine. Like in his other works, Pollan’s description of the issues is thorough and couched in a great deal of anecdotal and well-researched evidence that help to move along the discussion. He examines in detail the way that we have constructed an approach to food that he labels “nutritionism,” an approach that focuses on eating “nutrients” rather than simply food.

Pollan follows the rise of this outlook from its inception to its current state and describes many of the effects. He describes the low-fat craze (now apparently being debunked) to the craze for fiber. He also examines the basic idea that we look at food as a compilation of nutrients rather than as something edible. His basic premise is that we would likely be better off ignoring most (if not all) of food science and, as he counsels us, simply to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”

Pollan writes that he has given away the entire story in the first line, but again, as he did in Omnivore’s Dilemma, he continues in great detail and with an intriguing style into what that means and how it goes from a simple to a very complex question.

The second and third portions of the book are a further examination of how our eating culture became what it is. Pollan then provides a very straight-forward examination of the ways to escape from the negative aspects of what he calls “The Western Diet.”

The book has already seen relatively wide commercial and critical success. Published in 2008, it rose to the top of the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction and stayed at the top for six weeks.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food starts with a broad sketch of a key social change: how control over what families ate shifted from cultural factors, such as mothers and traditions, to marketing and the food industry. The result is that more health claims are made for food than ever before—but people are less healthy. The goal of In Defense of Food is to analyze the reasons for this seeming paradox. As Pollan does so, he makes other arguments as well, such as the idea that people should spend less time worrying about health and food and that the current Western diet makes people sick.

The body of the book is divided into three related sections. Part I, "The Age of Nutritionism," analyzes the scientific ideology called nutritionism. Part II, "The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization," applies the information presented in the first part to widespread issues of public health. In Part III, "Getting Over Nutritionism," Pollan focuses on the personal level, and he gives specific advice for what people should and shouldn't eat.

Part I: The Age of Nutritionism

"The Age of Nutritionism" argues that "food" in the purest or most traditional sense has disappeared from groceries in recent years and is replaced by "nutrients." The roots of this transformation are traced to nineteenth-century scientists William Prout (who identified protein, carbohydrates, and fat as the core components of food) and Justus von Liebig (the German chemist who discovered the role of minerals, or micronutrients). This led to the invention of vitamins and to increasing prestige for nutrition science.

Throughout the twentieth century, scientific understanding of nutrition and health developed new theories, such as the lipid hypothesis, which argued that increased consumption of fat and cholesterol were contributing to heart disease. In 1977, nutrition science received a major push from the American government when a Senate committee tasked with addressing health concerns developed its first dietary guidelines. These recommended eating less meat and dairy, but under pressure from lobbyists, the government weakened this recommendation. In part to avoid angering powerful lobbies and in part due to scientific trends, these guidelines began to speak about nutrients rather than food.

The term nutritionism was created by Gyorgy Scrinis in 2002. It refers to the fact that contemporary understanding of nutrition is more like an ideology than a science. Its core belief is that the individual nutrients are the essence of food. Because no one can see nutrients, this belief positions scientists as essential guides for the daily activity of eating. Like other ideologies, nutritionism divides its world along black-and-white lines: good nutrients and bad nutrients. However, there is ongoing debate about which nutrients go in which categories. Nutritionism is very useful for food manufacturers because they can now hype food as improved and healthier because they have added specific nutrients to it. It also allowed food manufacturers to finally dispel a labeling law from 1938, which had required any artificial food to be labeled as "imitation." After all, if nutrients are the essential elements of...



Start your free trial with eNotes for complete access to this resource and thousands more.



Save time with thousands of teacher-approved book and topic summaries.















In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Summary - eNotes.com 
http://www.enotes.com/topics/in-defense-of-food
'via Blog this'

In Defense of Food with Michael Pollan

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

 These words to live by from the award-winning author Michael Pollan resonate at the heart of his newest work, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto."



He considers what science does and does not know about diet and health, proposing a new way of thinking about food that is informed by ecology and tradition.



Pollan is Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. Series: Voices [5/2008] [Health and Medicine] [Science] [Show ID: 14209]

• Category

  • Education

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/sBr_i1mH_08

California drought.

The Allegheny Front @AlleghenyFront

The lineup: 7 "shady characters" that often get blamed for the California drought. @NPRFood http://n.pr/1FMWnBD

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/04/12/398757250/beyond-almonds-a-rogues-gallery-of-guzzlers-in-californias-drought

Smoking Marijuana for 50 Years, and Turning Out Just Fine

Catherine Hiller, author of "Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir," at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, where she believes she first smoked marijuana in the 1960s. Credit David Gonzalez/The New York Times


N.Y. / REGION
Smoking Marijuana for 50 Years, and Turning Out Just Fine
APRIL 12, 2015
Side Street

By DAVID GONZALEZ

As much as Catherine Hiller refuses to admit it, marijuana is a gateway drug. Seriously, after smoking more or less every day for the past 50 years, there had to be some consequences. Yet, she did not go to jail after a random police stop. She did not end up strung out on heroin, sprawled in an alley. She didn’t even binge-munch herself into obesity.

Her daily puffs led her to write a book, “Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir.”

Just in case people approached her story waiting for the Lifetime movie moment of regret and picking up the pieces of a broken life, she started her book in the present day, flashing back, if you will, to the rest of her life. As a writer — she has published novels and short stories — the approach was an entertaining challenge. As a wife, daughter of an activist and proud mother of three young men, she wanted to show that her life turned out nicely.

“I wanted to show people that smoking marijuana did not make me hit rock bottom,” Ms. Hiller, 68, said. “My story is the story of so many people who use each day. And so what? What’s the issue? What will it lead to?”

Well, in the case of minority youths, it could lead to jail time and a criminal record, something Ms. Hiller feels is unjust. Recently, a young man smoking a joint in a Bronx building was mortally injured when he fell off a roof while running from police officers who entered the lobby after reports that marijuana was being used in public view. On the other hand, she and other marijuana advocates wonder about the criminal charges attached to using when banks, like HSBC, laundered drug money but got off with a fineand no criminal indictments.

She has experienced the disparities of race and class when it comes to how law enforcement looks at smokers. In her book, she recounts how after she and her first husband lit up in their car, a policeman flashed a spotlight on them, told them to put out the joint and then waved them off. After an essay adapted from her book was published in The New York Times, someone accused her of living in a cocoon of white privilege.

“Maybe I won’t get stopped,” she said. “But I wrote this not because of my privilege, but because I think it’s absurd that anyone would get stopped for this. Whatever I can do to legalize it, I will.”

She had taken a dim view of marijuana when she was a teenager living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1963 and learned that a girlfriend got high at a party. Like someone who took her cue from the propaganda film “Reefer Madness,” she thought her friend would descend into a dissolute life of jazz and juke joints.

But somehow, Ms. Hiller changed her mind not too long afterward. In fact, she practiced by smoking cigarettes, waiting for her chance to get high. That came when she befriended Myles, a young man who showered her with attention. He offered her her first joint, which they shared — she thinks — in Prospect Park in Brooklyn (followed by a trip to a bar).

“I had the world’s best hamburger,” Ms. Hiller said. “Inside, I thought, ‘This is for me.’ Perhaps euphoria is too strong a word, but things just seemed great.”

Since the mid-1960s, her habit — and yes, she admits a dependency, just as she says someone might have a dependency on coffee — has continued for a half century, though she took breaks for pregnancy and for nursing her babies as well as a three-year hiatus soon after meeting Mark, her current husband. She is emphatic that she did not smoke around her boys, but did offer them a joint once they turned 18 (and were already smoking).

People might think she is some sort of party girl, but to hear her tell it, she is somewhat sedate. Ms. Hiller has had the same dealer for 35 years, watching as his regulars have gotten older and grayer. And there are many things she will not do while high, including driving and attending gatherings where she does not know many people.

Ms. Hiller is looking forward to her book tour, which will take her to at least one dispensary on the West Coast. Not that she justifies her use by claiming medical need.

“I don’t need it to relieve cramps,” she said. “I just like the feeling.”

Some of her neighbors in the New York suburb where she now lives do, too, she said. It amuses her to discover “secret smokers,” even if the whole idea of secrecy is, to her, a holdover from an alarmist and judgmental era. She hopes her book and campaign — where she invites readers to share their stories on her website,marijuanamemoir.com — will lead to a change of opinion and laws.

“It’s hard for people to change their mind-set after so many years,” Ms. Hiller admitted. “But look at marriage equality and how that happened so fast. That was unheard-of five years ago. So maybe smoking pot will be completely normal, and no one will raise an eyebrow when they find out somebody smokes.”







A version of this article appears in print on April 13, 2015, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Smoking Marijuana for 50 Years, and Turning Out Just Fine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/nyregion/after-50-years-of-smoking-marijuana-her-life-turned-out-nicely.html?
action=click&contentCollection=Sports&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Dr Peter Gøtzsche exposes big pharma as organized crime

Published on Apr 1, 2015

For more informative videos and free information visit http:drmcdougall.com

Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD is a Danish medical researcher, and leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written numerous reviews within the Cochrane collaboration.
Dr.Gøtzsche has been critical of screening for breast cancer using mammography, arguing that it cannot be justified; His critique stems from a meta-analysis he did on mammography screening studies and published as Is screening for breast cancer with mammography justifiable? in The Lancet in 2000. In it he discarded 6 out of 8 studies arguing their randomization was inadequate.

In 2006 a paper by Gøtzsche on mammography screening was electronically published in the European Journal of Cancer ahead of print. The journal later removed the paper completely from the journal website without any formal retraction. The paper was later published in Danish Medical Bulletin with a short note from the editor, and Gøtzsche and his coauthors commented on the unilateral retraction that the authors were not involved in.

In 2012 his book Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy was published. In 2013 his book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare was published.http://www.cochrane.org/

• Category

  • Education

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/dozpAshvtsA

Peter Gøtzsche - Overdiagnosed & Overmedicated

Published on May 12, 2015

In his talk, Peter will discuss the various ways in which psychiatry may be harming rather than helping its patients, citing evidence from his latest book "Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare".

More information at https://mentalaz.wordpress.com/home/

• Category

  • Science & Technology

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/ZMhsPnoIdy4

Big Pharmaceutical Executive Turns Whistleblower

Published on Jun 18, 2013

Big Pharmaceutical Executive Turns Whistle blower.

• Category

  • Nonprofits & Activism

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/g8bt8eUB1CU

Why Worry

Source:

Disease Symptoms ‏@DiseaseSymptom   

We worry about all the wrong things. #health

Poisoned Nail Salon Employees: cancer, miscarriages, lung diseases and other ailments.

Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers

Some ingredients used in nail products have been tied to cancer, miscarriages, lung diseases and other ailments. The industry has long fought regulations.

By SARAH MASLIN NIR MAY 8, 2015


Each time a customer pulled open the glass door at the nail shop in Ridgewood, Queens, where Nancy Otavalo worked, a cheerful chorus would ring out from where she sat with her fellow manicurists against the wall: “Pick a color!”

Ms. Otavalo, a 39-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was usually stationed at the first table. She trimmed and buffed and chatted about her quick-witted toddler, or her strapping 9-year-old boy. But she never spoke of another dreamed-for child, the one lost last year in a miscarriage that began while she was giving a customer a shoulder massage.

At the second table was Monica A. Rocano, 30, who sometimes brought a daughter to visit. But clients had never met her 3-year-old son, Matthew Ramon. People thought Matthew was shy, but in fact he has barely learned how to speak and can walk only with great difficulty.

A chair down from Ms. Rocano was another, quieter manicurist. In her idle moments, she surfed the Internet on her phone, seeking something that might explain the miscarriage she had last year. Or the four others that came before.

Con

Articles in this series are examining the working conditions and potential health risks endured by nail salon workers.

Similar stories of illness and tragedy abound at nail salons across the country, of children born slow or “special,” of miscarriages and cancers, of coughs that will not go away and painful skin afflictions. The stories have become so common that older manicurists warn women of child-bearing age away from the business, with its potent brew of polishes, solvents, hardeners and glues that nail workers handle daily.

A growing body of medical research shows a link between the chemicals that make nail and beauty products useful — the ingredients that make them chip-resistant and pliable, quick to dry and brightly colored, for example — and serious health problems.

Whatever the threat the typical customer enjoying her weekly French tips might face, it is a different order of magnitude, advocates say, for manicurists who handle the chemicals and breathe their fumes for hours on end, day after day.

The prevalence of respiratory and skin ailments among nail salon workers is widely acknowledged. More uncertain, however, is their risk for direr medical issues. Some of the chemicals in nail products are known to cause cancer; others have been linked to abnormal fetal development, miscarriages and other harm to reproductive health.

A number of studies have also found that cosmetologists — a group that includes manicurists, as well as hairdressers and makeup artists — have elevated rates of death from Hodgkin’s disease, of low birth-weight babies and of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

But firm conclusions are elusive, partly because the research is so limited. Very few studies have focused on nail salon workers specifically. Little is known about the true extent to which they are exposed to hazardous chemicals, what the accumulated effect is over time and whether a connection can actually be drawn to their health.

The federal law that regulates cosmetics safety, which is more than 75 years old, does not require companies to share safety information with the Food and Drug Administration. The law bans ingredients harmful to users, but it contains no provisions for the agency to evaluate the effects of the chemicals before they are put on shelves. Industry lobbyists have fought tougher monitoring requirements.

Industry officials say their products contain minuscule amounts of the chemicals identified as potentially hazardous and pose no threat.

Every worker has the right to come home safely at the end of every day. They shouldn’t be coming home
and getting sick.


DR. DAVID MICHAELS

“What I hear are insinuations based on ‘linked to,’” said Doug Schoon, co-chairman of the Professional Beauty Association’s Nail Manufacturers Council on Safety. “When we talk about nail polish, there’s no evidence of harm.”

Health advocates and officials disagree, pointing to the accumulated evidence.

“We know that a lot of the chemicals are very dangerous,” said David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees workplace safety. “We don’t need to see the effect in nail salon workers to know that they are dangerous to the workers.”

So many health complaints were cropping up among the mostly Vietnamese manicurists in Oakland, Calif., that workers at Asian Health Services, a community organization there, decided on their own to investigate about a decade ago.

“It was like, ‘Oh wow, what’s happening in this community?’” said Julia Liou, who is now the health center’s director of program planning and development and a co-founder of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. “We are seeing this epidemic of people who are sick.”

The organization helped form a coalition in California that pushed for restrictions on chemicals used in nail salons, but the cosmetics industry succeeded in blocking a ban.

In recent years, in the face of growing health concerns, some polish companies have said that they have removed certain controversial chemicals from their products. But random testing of some of these products by government agencies showed the chemicals were still present.

Some states and municipalities recommend workers wear gloves and other protection, but salon owners usually discourage them from donning such unsightly gear. And even though officials overseeing workplace safety concede that federal standards on levels of chemicals that these workers can be exposed to need revision, nothing has been done.

So manicurists continue to paint fingertips, swipe off polish and file down false nails, while absorbing chemicals that are potentially hazardous to their health.

“There are so many stories but no one that dares to tell them; no one dares to tell them because they have no one to tell,” Ms. Otavalo said in an interview on a day off from the Ridgewood salon, babysitting for her colleague’s developmentally disabled son, Matthew. (Ms. Otavalo left her job at the salon a few months ago.) “There are thousands of women who are working in this, but no one asking: ‘What’s happening to you? How do you feel?’ We just work and work.”

‘They Cannot Breathe’

The walls of Dr. Charles Hwu’s second-story office in Flushing, Queens, are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, gifts from patients he has cared for from cradle to adulthood. Over his decades as an internist in this predominantly Asian enclave, Dr. Hwu has repeatedly encountered a particular set of conditions affecting otherwise healthy women.

“They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, and also asthma symptoms — they cannot breathe,” he said during a break between patients this winter. “Judging from the symptoms with these women, it seems that they are either smokers, secondhand smokers or asthma patients, but they are none of the above. They work for nail salons.”

In interviews with over 125 nail salon workers, airway ailments like those in Dr. Hwu’s office were ubiquitous. Many have learned to simply laugh them off — the nose that constantly bleeds, the throat that has ached every day since the manicurist started working.

Dr. Charles Hwu, in Flushing, Queens, has noticed a particular set of symptoms among the nail salon workers he treats: “They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, and also asthma symptoms — they cannot breathe.”

In the nail salon she owned in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, Eugenia Colon spent years molding sometimes 30 sets of talon like nails a day in a haze of acrylic powder, ignoring a persistent cough that grew more pronounced over time. She was found to have sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, in her lungs. In scans, they appeared as if covered with granules of sand, streaked by tiny scars.

The doctor who diagnosed her condition asked Ms. Colon what she did for a living. When she told him, he was frank: As she beautified other women, she inhaled clouds of acrylic and other dust, tiny particles that gouged the soft tissue of her lungs

“We made money off it, but was it worth it?” Ms. Colon, 52, now an aesthetician in a Manhattan spa. “It came with a price...

Of the 20 common nail product ingredients listed as causing health problems in the appendix of a safety brochure put out by the Environmental Protection Agency, 17 are hazardous to the respiratory tract, according to the agency. Overexposure to each of them induces symptoms such as burning throat or lungs, labored breathing or shortness of breath

A 2006 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that included more than 500 Colorado manicurists found about 20 percent of them had a cough most days and nights. The same examination showed those who worked with artificial nails were about three times as likely to get asthma on the job as someone not in the industry

Malcom Wy New York

Anyone who thinks an industry can self-regulate needs to study their history. There will always be jobs at stake, but we should choose lives over jobs.

Skin disorders are also omnipresent among nail salon workers. Many of the chemicals in nail salon products are classified by government agencies as skin sensitizers, capable of provoking painful reactions.

Some veteran manicurists say they can recognize one another on the street: They have the same coffee-colored stains on their cheeks. Certain cosmetic color additives — particularly a type of brilliant red — have been shown by researchers to cause such skin discoloration.

When Ki Ok Chung, a manicurist for almost two decades, had her fingerprints taken in the early 2000s for her United States citizenship, her prints were almost nonexistent. She says constant work with files, solvents and emollients is responsible. CreditYeong-Ung Yang for The New York Times

When Ki Ok Chung, a manicurist who worked in salons for almost two decades, had her fingerprints taken in the early 2000s for her United States citizenship, she made an upsetting discovery: Her prints were almost nonexistent. They had to be taken seven times. She says constant work with files, solvents and emollients is responsible.

“I realized my fingerprints had been disappearing,” she said.

Today, she cannot touch hot or cold dishes without searing pain.

Even as the weather warmed into spring last year, Zoila Calle, a manicurist, then 22, who worked in Harlem, wore wool gloves indoors and out. Underneath were black pustules so painful she could not grasp a polish bottle or text on her phone. It was the second time her hands had erupted in the warts, a common occurrence for nail salon workers. While customers often fret about salon hygiene, it is manicurists who appear truly at risk, suffering through endless fungal infections and other skin diseases from the blur of hands and feet they touch every day.

“It’s a beautiful industry, it makes people feel better,” Ms. Colon, who owned the salon in Mill Basin, said in an interview, a faint wheeze just audible behind her ready laugh. “But if a lot of people knew the truth behind it, it wouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t go.”

Miscarriages and Warnings

In a way, Ms. Rocano, one of the manicurists in the Ridgewood salon, felt herself lucky. Her colleagues seated on either side of her had each lost a pregnancy last year, hoped-for babies whom they separately described exactly the same way: “Like losing a dream.”

She, however, has her toddler, Matthew.

A dark-haired bundle with amber skin when he was born, Matthew was an infant laden with his mother’s hopes. Holding him in her arms, she was reminded of the daughter she had left behind in Ecuador and still has not seen in more than six years. This time, she felt, she could do right by her child.

Nancy Otavalo with her daughter, 4, at bottom of window, and her niece. CreditNicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Yet as he grew, something seemed off. His legs were weak; they buckled when he tried to stand. By age 3 he still could not say his name. In visits to her pediatrician, she learned that Matthew was delayed on almost every measure, both physically and cognitively.

At one point, his doctor asked her what she did for a living. When she told him, he asked how long she had worked in the nail salon while pregnant. Six months, she responded.

The doctor told her, “When babies are forming in your womb, they absorb everything, and if they are exposed to anything, it can cause them harm,” she recalled.

On a day five years ago, a doctor gave a similar warning to the manicurist who works at the table to Ms. Rocano’s right, as she sat in the obstetrics unit at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn. There she learned she had miscarried a

“I went to the hospital, and I told him, ‘I’m a manicurist,’” said the woman, who declined to give her name because she wanted her medical history to remain private. Her doctor urged her to change jobs. “The chemicals are not healthy for your lungs, your liver, and sometimes they begin cancer,” she recalled. “I was laughing. I said, ‘Who is going to pay my bills?’” She has since miscarried twice more.

In scientific circles, the three chemicals in nail products that are associated with the most serious health issues are dibutyl phthalate, toluene and formaldehyde. They are known as the “toxic trio” among worker advocates.

Dibutyl phthalate, called DBP for short, makes nail polish and other products pliable. In Australia, it is listed as a reproductive toxicant and must be labeled with the phrases “may cause harm to the unborn child” and “possible risk of impaired fertility.” Starting in June, the chemical will be prohibited from cosmetics in that country. It is one of over 1,300 chemicals banned from use in cosmetics in the European Union. But in the United States, where fewer than a dozen chemicals are prohibited in such products, there are no restrictions on DBP.

Toluene, a type of solvent, helps polish glide on smoothly. But the E.P.A. says in a fact sheet that it can impair cognitive and kidney function. In addition, repeated exposure during pregnancy can “adversely affect the developing fetus,” according to the agency.

Formaldehyde, best known for its use in embalming, is a hardening agent in nail products. In 2011, the National Toxicology Program, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, labeled it a human carcinogen. By 2016, it will be banned from cosmetics in the European Union.

Cosmetics industry officials say linking the chemicals to manicurists’ health complaints amounts to faulty science.

Dibutyl phthalate, toluene and formaldehyde “have been found to be safe under current conditions of use in the United States,” said Lisa Powers, a spokeswoman for thePersonal Care Products Council, the main trade association and lobbying group for the cosmetics industry.

The Dangers of Manicure Products The ingredients that make nail products useful have been linked to various health pro

“The safe and historical use of these ingredients is not questioned by F.D.A.,” she continued.

In reality, the responsibility for evaluating the safety of the chemicals as they are used in cosmetics is left with the companies themselves.

Even while insisting they are safe, some polish companies have voluntarily begun to remove certain chemicals from formulations. By 2006, several prominent brands had announced their products would no longer contain any of the three. The new products were labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” referring to the number of chemicals that are ostensibly no longer in

But a 2010 study by the F.D.A. and another in 2012 by the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Department of Toxic Substance Control found in random tests that some products, even ones labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” in fact contained those very chemicals.

It was from routine community outreach trips to local nail salons in Oakland that Ms. Liou and her colleagues from Asian Health Services, as well as Thu Quach, a research scientist, became alarmed: Almost all of the manicurists interviewed had health complaints; some were terribly ill.

Dr. Quach, with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, set out to conduct a health survey of nail salon workers in Alameda County, which includes Oakland.

Le Thi Lam, a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the United States in 1988 after fleeing the Communist government in her country, was among the first. She had started out in a Sacramento nail salon, becoming proficient in acrylic nails, sculpting them all day long from a slurry of solvent and plastic polymers.

In 1991, she learned she had a thyroid condition. She had also developed asthma. She quit, too sickened to work and concerned about the chemicals she was handling. But she soon returned, unable to find another job with her limited English. Ten years later, she had breast cancer.

“I know that manicurists like me are also going through the same things and having major health problems,” she said, seated in a conference room at Asian Health Services last summer, a blouse hiding a red scar from her breastbone to her armpit. “But they still hang on to their jobs to earn their living.”

Dr. Quach kept going with her research, undertaking several other studies. One found manicurists had an increased risk for gestational diabetes and for having undersize babies. Another, looking at cancer, found no correlation. Both studies were hampered by data limitations. Mostly, they point to the need for further study.

“What we know is what’s reported by the women again and again: that there is something here,” Dr. Quach said. “Those chemicals they are dealing with are chemicals that we know people react to, and we are hearing the stories from these workers that they are reacting to them. It’s all there.”

‘Fox Guarding the Henhouse’

The regulation of chemicals in nail products is dictated by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. The part of the law that deals with cosmetics totals just 591 words.

The Food and Drug Administration explains the limitationsit faces under the law on its website: “Cosmetic products and ingredients do not need F.D.A. premarket approval, with the exception of color additives.” It continues, “Neither the law nor F.D.A. regulations require specific tests to demonstrate the safety of individual products or ingredients.” In addition, “The law also does not require cosmetic companies to share their safety information with F.D.A.”

In 1976, the cosmetics industry itself established the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a panel that is supposed to “review and assess the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics in an open, unbiased and expert manner,” according to its website. But the panel is financed entirely by the Personal Care Products Council, the industry lobbying group. The panel’s offices are also in the same building in Washington as the products council.

Even so, Ms. Powers said the panel was independent. She is the official spokeswoman for the industry lobby, but all questions to the review panel were handled by her.

Toan Ngoc Do, left, a manicurist student, worked on the nails of a fellow student, Tien Dang Thuy, during a class at the International College of Cosmetology in San Francisco last May.CreditRamin Rahimian for The New York Times

Since its founding, the panel has reviewed only a small fraction of the substances in use in cosmetics today. Among them were dibutyl phthalate and toluene; the panel determined that they are safe the way they are used in nail products — on nails, not skin.

“It’s a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” says Janet Nudelman, the director of program and policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, which has argued for more stringent regulation. “You’ve got an industry-funded review panel that’s assessing the safety for the very industry that’s funding the review panel.”

There have been efforts in recent years to overhaul the 1938 law and more strictly regulate cosmetic chemicals, but none made headway in the face of industry resistance. Since 2013, the products council, just one of several industry trade groups, has poured nearly $2 million on its own into lobbying Congress.

After talks between the cosmetics industry and the F.D.A. broke down last year, Michael R. Taylor, the agency’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, rebuked the industry in an unusual open letter for pushing a measure that would have declared a wide range of potentially dangerous chemicals safe “without a credible scientific basis” and others safe that are known to pose “real and substantial risks to consumers.”

Ms. Powers said the letter mischaracterized the industry’s stance. “The law was created or passed in 1938,” she said. “Nobody is saying that we shouldn’t look at that now and say: ‘Is it a contemporary approach? Does it need to bring us into the 21st century?’ We all agree to that. But that doesn’t make for a sexy headline.”

The council, in fact, said it supported a bipartisan bill introduced in April by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, that would broaden F.D.A. oversight of cosmetics, including giving the agency recall ability. But some health advocates said the bill would continue to permit the industry to largely regulate itself; it would also pre-empt states’ abilities to create stronger rules.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is the federal agency that sets chemical exposure limits in workplaces. The studies that have examined the chemical exposure levels for manicurists have found them to be well below these standards. Health advocates say the safety administration’s standards are badly out of date and flawed.

Even Dr. Michaels, the head of the safety administration, said his agency’s standards needed revision. Currently, he said, workers “can be exposed to levels that are legal according to OSHA but are still dangerous.”

The agency makes illustrated pamphlets warning manicurists about the chemical hazards they face and urges them to wear gloves and ventilate their shops. These steps and others become mandatory when exposure limits are exceeded. But in practical terms, with the standards set so high, salons are free to do nothing. Dr. Michaels said the agency was hamstrung by its own cumbersome rule-making process.

“Every worker has the right to come home safely at the end of every day,” Dr. Michaels said. “They shouldn’t be coming home and getting sick.”

The debate over the chemicals has also unfolded at the state level. In 2005, lawmakers in California proposed banning DBP from cosmetic products sold or manufactured in the state. Industry lobbyists flooded the State Capitol (some bearing gift baskets of lipstick and nail polish), spending over a half-million dollars fighting the ban, according to state records. Some of the country’s best-known cosmetics companies — Estée Lauder, Mary Kay and OPI, among others — weighed in against it. The bill ultimately failed. A much more limited measure passed — over the industry’s objections — that required cosmetics companies to disclose certain hazardous chemicals to the California Department of Public Hea

Blocked by an industry with deep pockets, the California advocates say they had to scale back their goals. They introduced a grass-roots program that officially recognizes “healthy nail salons,” those that carry “greener” products and that ventilate. The New York City Council held a hearing this month on a measure that would establish a similar voluntary program

Today, out of several thousand salons in California, however, there are just 55 salons in the program.

One of them is Lulu Nail Spa, a tiny salon with a dusky rose wall and white-leather pedicure chairs in Burlingame, Calif. The shop earned the designation in May by switching certain products, using gloves and opening the doors to sweep out fumes. The owner, Hai Thi Le, a Vietnamese immigrant, said she hoped the new decal she placed on her window would draw green-minded customers.

But she did not make the changes just for business. As a young woman working in her brother’s nail shop, Ms. Le said she breathed in so much acrylic powder that when she kissed her husband after work, he complained her breath smelled of solvent and plastic dust.

Standing in the Breeze

On her days off from the salon in Ridgewood, Queens, Nancy Otavalo ran for a time an ad hoc day care center at her home a few blocks away with her sister, another manicurist. The sisters would pick up salon workers’ children after school for a fee, entertaining them in the basement apartment the sisters shared with their families.

Matthew, her colleague’s son who can barely speak, got special treatment, spending time curled on the gleaming black leather couch — bought with tips — that is the centerpiece of her home.

After Ms. Otavalo miscarried last year, she lay for hours on the same black leather couch, in silence, the lights darkened, unable to summon the willpower to get up.

A week after a procedure to remove the fetus at Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn, she rose, put on the lavish makeup her sister says makes her feel confident and went back to work at her manicure table.

Clients who stopped by for their weekly manicures knew nothing about what happened; everything appeared the same.

Except every so often, after Ms. Otavalo had painted the last stroke of top coat on a customer’s hand, she scraped back her chair and walked to the front of the shop. She pulled open the salon’s glass door to stand in the breeze for a while.





Reporting was contributed by Jiha Ham, Yuhan Liu, Julie Turkewitz, Isvett Verde, Yeong-Ung Yang and Heyang Zhang, and research by Susan C. Beachy.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/nyregion/nail-salon-workers-in-nyc-face-hazardous-chemicals.html?emc=edit_th_20150509&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59725256&_r=0