February 20, 2012

This week opens with Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), the solemn pre-Lenten procession that brings an estimated three-quarters of a gazillion visitors to New Orleans to expose themselves to masked strangers in return for plastic beads. Since the American Academy of Pediatrics has chosen The Big Easy to host this year’s National Conference And Exhibition, organizers have had to seriously consider pediatricians’ request that the celebration be renamed either “Overweight Tuesday” or “Obese Tuesday” depending on its Body Mass Index.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons/ Infrogmation/Creative Commons License Mardi Gras in New Orleans: A little pre-Lenten fun.

Of course corneal abrasions from flying trinkets are not the only hidden dangers in the world of pediatrics this week. Think, for example, of the words, “organic baby formula.” The very phrase reeks of wholesome goodness, evoking images of green fields, fat-cheeked infants in tie-die cloth diapers, and arsenic. That’s right, most organic baby formulas replace evil high fructose corn syrup with earth-friendly organic brown rice syrup. According to a new report in Environmental Health Perspectives, one of the favors these rice plants do the earth is to absorb arsenic from pesticides used before the fields were organic. Fortunately, only a tiny portion of the US formula market is thought to be affected, since most parents who would buy organic baby formula wouldn’t buy any formula at all.

Organized sports contribute to many kids’ health, if not to every child’s self-esteem (ahem). I personally was never much of a football player, which is sad, because I’d have looked a lot better in shoulder pads. That said, as we’re becoming more aware of the risk of concussions, those of us whose kids play non-shoulder-pad-wearing sports may be tempted to feel a little smug about how well we’re protecting our children’s brains. Now here comes this bunch of researchers in Columbus, Ohio, to knock us off our high horses, probably putting us at risk of traumatic brain injury. According to their study in the American Journal Of Sport Medicine, while football does indeed lead the pack for concussion risk, other high-risk activities include girls’ soccer, girls’ basketball, and boys’ wrestling. For some reason their injury survey did not include the sport of chess, but I remember one heated match where I took a rook to the frontal lobe, which would have been dangerous had the impact not been partly absorbed by the tape on the bridge of my glasses.

Photo courtesy US Consumer Product Safety Commission A little fun before falling off this playground toy (voluntarily pulled off the market by the manufacturer, thank goodness).

Those of us who survived the 1970s love to talk about how dangerous our playgrounds were compared with the ones our children now enjoy. We zipped down searing-hot steel slides in shorts, landed on bare concrete, and then ran off to the swings to see how many splinters we could get! But lest we assume that mulch and shredded-tire surfacing has robbed playgrounds of risk, the Consumer Product Safety Commission brings us news on the Slalom Glider slide, a giant plastic tongue which, judging by the picture, has no sides whatsoever. The six-foot-high structure has so far only caused 15 reported fractures and one bruised spleen, which, when you look at the thing, is a pretty good record. Of course when I was a kid, that was considered just another day at the park.

No matter how hard you try, you can only make life so safe. That said, I think the tips on the official Mardi Gras website are useful for life outside the French Quarter as well: don’t behave irrationally in public, don’t be sassy to the police, and never bend down in front of a moving parade float.

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