ABCDE
HEALTH SCIENCE WHAT’S IN OUR
tuesday, june 15, 2010 &
CONSUMER REPORTS Don’t burn, baby
The best sunscreens protect against harmful rays and work even after a good long swim. E2
Health-care Q&A Can a new college grad with a part-time job stay on a parent’s insurance? E6 16 million The number of women living with AIDS worldwide. A vaginal ring loaded with anti-HIV drugs is being tested. E6 It’s summer. You’re hot, sweaty and ready for a cold glass of water. Is it okay to turn on a WATER
D.C. faucet? Are bottles bad for the environment? Some facts to help you make your choice. PLUS: An environmental scientist on why he always chooses tap; home fi lters and more. E4.
DESCRIPTION
About 85 percent of Americans get their water from municipal systems, which collect water from a variety of sources and treat it to national standards.
About 55 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States originates at springs or nearby groundwater aquifers.
COST PER GALLON
Less than half a cent
(highest for single-serving purchases)
$2-$6
About 45 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States originates with municipal water systems; some undergoes additional processing.
Less than 1 percent of U.S. water comes from desalination plants, which remove salt from seawater or brackish water.
About 15 percent of Americans get water from a privately owned groundwater source.
(highest for single-serving purchases)
$1-$5
Less than one cent
Varies ADVANTAGES
Comprehensive quality/ monitoring standards Almost always safe
Water from some springs has a distinctive taste and may be preferred by some
May have fewer chemical additives
Because it comes from municipal water systems, it meets federal quality rules
Can be treated to control consistency of taste
Potentially vast supply of salt water
Drought- proof
Local, oſt en personal, control
Widely available Typically low-cost 24-7 availability
DISADVANTAGES
Quality can be aff ected by old home piping
CONSUMPTION PER PERSON (U.S., ANNUAL)
New contaminants with unknown health eff ects not monitored or regulated Taste can vary among systems
Weak federal regulation and monitoring of quality
100-200 gallons
Consumers must dispose of plastic bottles; 70 percent are not recycled
Weak federal regulation and monitoring of quality
Consumers must dispose of plastic bottles; 70 percent are not recycled
Environmental challenges to building, operating plants High energy costs
Not subject to national quality standards
More costly than other sources of public water
Production can aff ect local groundwater aquifers
17 gallons 13 gallons
mixed with other municipal supplies before distribution.
Desalinated water is very rare in the United States and is almost always
E DM VA HEALTH SCAN
What we eat The case against labeling genetically modified food. E2
MEDICAL MYSTERIES
Night sweats, fatigue and confusion
Tests were negative, but he kept getting worse. Then an unusual diagnosis emerged.
by Sandra G. Boodman Special to The Washington Post
The distinguished senior doctors, most clad in long white coats, settled into padded ochre chairs in a conference room at Johns Hopkins Medical Institu- tions early one morning last September as a junior specialist began to present the case of a patient who had stumped their colleagues for weeks. “This is kind of a depressing case,” in-
fectious-disease fellow Justin Bailey said by way of introduction. “But it has a hap- py ending.” Bailey summarized the 55-year-old ac- countant’s symptoms, which had result- ed in four admissions to Hopkins in 2009: night sweats, crushing fatigue, headache, shuffling gait and progressive confusion. Bailey ticked off the tests that had been performed. He described how the usual causes of unusual infections — an exotic organism picked up during travel, a new pet, close contact with someone just returned from overseas — had all been ruled out. So why had the patient, whom Bailey did not name, deteriorated so spectac- ularly in a matter of months? And what was wrong with him when test after test showed nothing that would account for his condition? Months later, Bailey recalled with sat-
isfaction that the eminent experts in the room that day had not seen a case like it. And most of the diagnoses they offered before Bailey revealed the correct an- swer were the same ones doctors treat- ing the patient had proposed, then dis- carded.
Beginning in the summer of 2008, Ei-
Vulnerable to droughts and contamination
Typically poorly monitored Unknown REPORTING BY PETER H. GLEICK; GRAPHIC BY BRAD WALTERS/THE WASHINGTON POST
leen Holden noticed that something seemed to be wrong with her husband, Dennis. He had lost about 25 pounds without trying, and seemed stressed and increasingly forgetful, which began to annoy her. Sometimes he would ask her where one of their four children was. She would tell him, and then he’d ask the same question five minutes later, “like he hadn’t been listening,” she recalled. Dennis Holden had recently been pro- moted to a more demanding job as comptroller of the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center. Eileen, a school- teacher, recalled one Sunday when he called their Charles County home, nearly 10 hours after he had gone to his office to
mystery continued on E5
Ratings don’t mean a lot to people in Medicare plans
by Susan Jaffe Kaiser Health News
For consumers looking for bargains
on refrigerators or restaurants, ratings can be helpful. But a score card doesn’t work as well for selecting a Medicare private health plan. About 47 million people are in Medi- care, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled; nearly a quar- ter of them are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, offered by insurance companies as alternatives to the tradi- tional program. The plans, which re- ceive federal subsidies, offer Medi- care’s standard benefits plus extra ben- efits, often including prescription drug coverage. A few years ago, federal offi- cials began rating these plans — using a scale of one to five stars — but sen- iors’ advocates, policy analysts, in- surers and some top Medicare officials agree the ratings are flawed. Even so, the star system is about to become more significant. Under the new health-care overhaul
law, the ratings will be used for the first time to award bonuses potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the best plans. If the bonuses had been in effect last year, the top-rated
The sex life of teens is still enough to drive a parent gaga AnyBODY
Carolyn Butler
Medicare’s Web site has only limited information on Medicare Advantage plans. Changes are in the works.
plans would have received a total of $1.3 billion, estimates Brian Biles, a health policy professor at George Washington University. Seniors don’t seem to pay much at- tention to the ratings. Beneficiaries tend to pick Medicare Advantage plans based on cost and access to their doc- tors, not ratings, says Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS. More than 75 percent of the plans’ members choose plans with
medicare continued on E6
dating and mating habits of today’s teenagers. I mean, it wasn’t so long ago that I was young, hooking up and rolling my eyes at my mother, Tipper Gore and any other adult who bemoaned my generation’s raunchy clothes, dirty music lyrics and generally loose ways. But once I became a mother myself, I developed a reflex that causes me to raise my eyebrows and gasp every time another adolescent sex-related headline appears: Chlamydia outbreaks in middle school! Oral-sex parties! Mass sexting! Bristol Palin, Jamie Lynn Spears and other babies having babies! But while it may be our natural,
N
god-given right to freak out about the sex lives of adolescents — and though it does seem as if unfettered access to the likes of Lady Gaga’s disco stick, Ludacris’s sex room and the wilds of the Internet have helped take burgeoning sexuality to a whole new level — it appears that young people today really aren’t any more promiscuous than we were. In fact, in the aggregate they’re actually less so, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease
ALAMY 43 percent
of boys 15 to 19 years old report having had sex (down from 55 percent in 1988)
42 percent
of girls in same age group report having had sex (down from 51 percent in 1988)
othing, and I mean absolutely nothing, will make you feel older (and lamer) than discussing the
Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. This survey of more than 2,700
teenagers across the country found that 43 percent of boys and 42 percent of girls between ages 15 and 19 say they have had sex, a figure that’s more or less unchanged since 2002 and compares with 55 percent of boys and 51 percent of girls in 1988. The new data, from 2006 to 2008, also showed that contraceptive use has remained steady in recent years, with 87 percent of boys and 79 percent of girls reporting that they employed some form of birth control the first time they had sex. “The good news is that we’ve been able to at least hold the line on the number of kids still deciding to wait on becoming sexually active,” says Kathy Woodward, medical director of the Adolescent Health Center at Children’s National Medical Center. “For those of us who believe in prevention and education, we’d like to nudge that number higher, but at least we’re staying the course, especially when you consider all of the media influences out there.”
Bill Albert, chief program officer for sex continued on E2
WATER WELL
DESALINATED WATER
BOTTLED PROCESSED WATER
BOTTLED SPRING WATER
MUNICIPAL TAP
WATER
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