The Consumer Product Safety Commission says
16 children choked to death and an estimated 210,300 wound up in emergency rooms in 2004 [PDF] because they swallowed toy parts. It is something to keep in mind when you shop for toys this holiday season. Choking on small parts, balls and balloons is a leading cause of death and injury in young children.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group says it still finds toys for sale that violate a federal ban on small parts in toys intended for children younger than 3 years old. Other toys with small parts still show up in stores without the required warning labels.
Interestingly, the group says that some manufacturers are causing problems by "over-labeling" toys and by doing so dilute the value of warning labels. U.S. PIRG's press release on the report says:
The 20th annual U.S. PIRG "Trouble in Toyland" report, available at www.toysafety.net, offers safety guidelines for purchasing toys for small children and provides examples of toys currently on store shelves that pose potential safety hazards. U.S. PIRG's research focused on four categories of toy dangers: toys that contain toxic chemicals, toys that pose choking hazards, toys that are dangerously loud, and toys that pose strangulation hazards.
The group says that parents should use a choke testing tube or a cardboard toilet paper roll to test small toys and parts. If any toy or part fits in the tube, then it is too small for children under 3 or older children who still put things in their mouths.
The group also found that manufacturers continue to market latex balloons to children younger than 8, despite the choking risk. Children that young should never be given balloons to play with, the report recommended.
Tuesday's report singled out yo-yo water balls as a potential strangulation hazard. The liquid-filled balls are attached to stretchy cords that can used to swing them overhead like a lasso. The group said their sale should be banned.
Winter Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Winter weather is moving in -- not that I would know a lot about that, down here in Florida -- and Al's Morning Meeting reader Jay Barrett, news director at KMXT News in Kodiak, Alaska, knows something about staying warm in the winter. I met him a couple of weeks ago, while I was visiting his state. He drops us a story note:
One of the more preventable accidental death causes here in Alaska is carbon-monoxide poisoning, caused by increased use of inefficient heaters or emergency generators, etc.
Here's a link from the Peninsula Clarion in Kenai, Alaska.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has this to say.
And the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention offer these links.
Steroids Online
Steroids are a schedule III controlled drug, like painkillers such as Vicodin. To use them legally, you need a valid prescription and medical reason -- for example, to gain weight after a severe illness.
In one heck of a series of stories, The Hartford Courant has looked at the easy availability of illegal steroids over the Internet from foreign-based sites. The paper learned that you can get them right here in the United States.
The paper bought samples from Spain, Moldova and Poland:
Tests by a team at Northeast Laboratories in Berlin, led by William Ullmann, showed a small amount of lead in one of the steroid samples, a liquid injectable that users shoot into their muscle. Traces of a banned, cancer-causing cattle fattener were found in a second sample. A third steroid proved to be nearly twice as concentrated as the amount on the label, raising overdose concerns. A fourth was labeled as one steroid, but was another. A fifth sample contained traces of a flammable liquid used in the production of plastics.
This is why federal agents, drug prosecutors and drug-industry regulators say they find Internet steroids terrifying.
The series includes a look inside the online forum of steroid users.
Late at the Gate Could Mean "Out of Luck"
USA Today warns travelers that airlines are getting stricter when it comes to last-minute arrivals at the gate:
Airlines are increasingly enforcing stated check-in times, road warriors say, leaving disgruntled fliers at the gate waiting for the next flight. And depending on airline policy, that could add the insult of added costs to the injury of being left off your ticketed flight.
(Related items: Chart of airlines check-in policies | Video)
According to a USA Today survey of the check-in policies of 18 U.S. airlines, fewer than half guarantee that a late-arriving passenger who is denied boarding will be booked on the next available flight for free. Many require the passenger to pay a ticket-change fee, the fare difference or both. (See chart.)
But the added costs are at the discretion of airport agents who often waive them.
"They're absolutely getting stricter," says Terry Trippler, an air travel expert at Cheapseats.com. Airline agents, he says, are more often enforcing check-in times "to the letter." Airlines typically have policies for check-in times both at the airport counter and at the departure gate.
Meter Reservations
Now, in places like Richmond, Va., it is even possible to call ahead to make reservations for a parking meter by phone.
"Excuse me -- waiter? I need a meter for 6 (cylinders) please."
Thanks to Al's Morning Meeting reader Frank Hammon for the tip.
Thanksgiving in a FEMA Trailer
To many of you living and working in the storm-damaged Gulf Coast area, this may seem pretty obvious. I am not speaking to you. I am speaking to the rest of the country, which may have put your region on the back burner after months of focused attention.
A million or so people are not celebrating Thanksgiving in their homes this year. They are spread across all 50 states, living with family, friends or strangers. They are crammed into one of the 125,000 FEMA-purchased mobile home trailers that are serving as temporary emergency housing.
I just returned from giving a measly few days of work to the effort to rebuild southern Mississippi. I met people there who have been doing the work, week after week, since the storm passed. They will go back many more times. Their dedication made me feel like a tourist. I was one of a large team of people who mostly spent our days hanging and mudding drywall in houses that had been gutted by other volunteers. I didn't muck out mud and debris, gut any moldy houses or clean refrigerators filled with rotten maggot-infested food. The volunteers who came before us did those awful jobs.
I can't get the image of life inside a FEMA relief trailer off my mind. Those little white trailers are parked in driveways, line narrow side streets and occupy open spaces in Mississippi and Louisiana. My mind is on the thousands of families who will not sit down around a big Norman Rockwell-esque banquet table tomorrow. They are still in those crammed little FEMA trailers waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. The trailers I was in were barely larger than a popup camper that a family of four might take on a weekend outing to a state park. One minister I met asked the (rhetorical) question, "Can you imagine living in one with a wife and two teenagers for a winter?" He says he knows such a family.
To get an idea of how bad things are for people in places like D'Iberville, Miss., you have to watch as one of these little campers arrives in the front yard. Families rejoice, because a trailer with bathrooms the size of coat closets has arrived. It says something about how they had been living before that trailer was parked in front of their destroyed home.
Larger FEMA trailers will soon be in use at a school where we worked, near Vancleve, Miss. Sometime after Christmas, kids will be able to have their own classroom trailer there. They will no longer have to share a school building in a split day -- students attend from 7 in the morning until lunch time, then another set of kids attend from early afternoon to early evening -- sharing the same classrooms.
Some Floridians who fell victim to Hurricane Charlie in 2004 are still living in FEMA trailer communities. Those people need our attention too.
Time magazine today has an insightful package of stories about the difficult lives of Katrina victims on this Thanksgiving eve.
Like an ice cream truck driving a small town street in summer, a Red Cross truck crept through the streets of D'Iberville at dusk Sunday. A cheerful woman called out over a loudspeaker "hot meals -- hot meals." Shadows trudged to her truck window, then carried Styrofoam boxes filled with warm food. The lady offered relief workers food too. She said it was "steak." We didn't take it -- but I wish now that I had looked inside the box to see what Sunday dinner would be for those who didn't have a choice.
I suspect a fair number of families will be sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner that arrives in one of those Red Cross vans tomorrow. They are on my mind today. I hope they have sweet potatoes. I hope they have pie.
For thousands of families who do eat dinner together tomorrow, it won't be the same as before. Some told us that they are still living elbow-to-elbow with extended family in crowded homes. One woman, for whom we hung drywall in the home that her husband built, told us that there were three families -- 10 people -- living in her son's house. If disaster teams keep coming, she hopes to be back in the little frame house for Christmas. If they allow "disaster fatigue" to set in, if the relief workers stop coming, who knows when she will get her home back. Her home was uninsured; she cannot afford the sheetrock, the labor, the supplies that it would take to rebuild. Churches she has never attended, from towns she has never heard of, have donated everything.
I am thinking today of the volunteers at churches and relief centers who are cooking Thanksgiving meals for disaster workers and victims -- just as they have cooked meals for weeks upon numbing weeks -- and will be, for months to come. You can see them as you drive down the streets of cities like D'Iberville, Miss. Some are working out of big white tents, called "Volunteer Villages," that have popped up because of the need for housing for out-of-town volunteers. The repeat volunteers must be bone-tired from it all. But I did not see one -- not one -- who was unkind, and I did not hear one volunteer say an unpleasant word.
I am thinking today of the journalists who have covered so many painful stories, while their own losses and the stress they were (and continue to be) under were just as great as those of the people they covered.
I also heard from those who live in the storm-damaged area, but who survived with minimal damage. They have a different burden -- a sense of guilt that others have suffered so unjustifiably.
I say all of this to urge you journalists, especially those of you outside of the storm-damaged area of the Gulf Coast, to keep telling the stories of the local relief crews that travel from your town to work in the hurricane-cleanup areas. There is so much more that needs to be done.
Some of these relief workers are idealistic young people. Others are senior citizens -- lifelong do-gooders who have donated their time and hands around the world. They gather from around the country and work in homes choked with drywall dust. They arrive as strangers, and yet the relief teams quickly grow curiously close.
Keep reporting the need for more help. Your stories will encourage others to volunteer. Don't think for a minute that the need for fundraisers, relief work or attention has passed. Don't stick those stories at the end of your newscasts or on inside pages because you think interest has waned. Do your best work -- there are lots of hurting people who need you still.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible.
