FOR RELEASE THE WEEK OF DEC. 17, 2000:
My daughter’s new husband smokes around my two small grandchildren. How can I persuade him to stop?
"Use a gentle and compassionate approach," advises Diane Demarest, coordinator of the University of Idaho’s Parents as Teachers demonstration project "Tell him that you know he wants the very best for his new family because he demonstrates it in so many other ways. Then ask him if he’s heard some of the new information about secondary smoke and its potential harmful effects in young children."
According to Demarest, numerous medical studies are showing that healthy children who breathe cigarette smoke suffer more colds, runny noses, sore throats, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, tonsillitis, ear infections and hospitalizations for severe respiratory infections. Infants who are exposed to cigarette smoke both before and after birth also have a greater risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Children are at especially high risk when they’re being held by someone who is smoking or when they are playing on a smoker’s floor: gravity intensifies pollution at ground level by pulling smoke downward.
"Think of a solution together," says Demarest. For example, if parents feel they must smoke, it’s far better for their children if they do so only outdoors or away from home.
Through Idaho’s Parents as Teachers program–offered free regardless of family income–parents of children under 3 get monthly visits from trained parent educators. The educators bring along children’s books, short videotapes on child development and ideas for fun activities designed to encourage learning during that specific month of the young child’s life. For more information, call Demarest at (208) 343-1542 in Boise or write her at dianed@uidaho.edu.
We had a Colorado blue spruce that was over 10 years old but seemed to quit growing during the last several years. It only got to be half the size of an identical tree. It would get new growth at the end of its branches in the spring, but the needles on the inside of the branches kept dying. The whole tree finally died this spring. Now the top and inside needles of our Austrian pine–which is the same age as the spruce–have become brown. We’re afraid the same thing is happening to it. Could you give us some answers?
Conifers always shed some of their oldest needles–the farthest-in ones on each branch–in the fall, says Ron Mahoney, University of Idaho extension forester. But that normal browning does not include the tops of the trees.
Your blue spruce may have fallen victim to one of several needle diseases, the most common of which causes needles to turn first purple, then brown, before dying. Usually a chronic condition that the tree can survive, this Rhizosphaera needle cast can become acute and kill a blue spruce.
However, the fact that your tree stopped growing before it died leads Mahoney to suspect a problem with its roots. Hard, impenetrable soil or very wet soil can both interfere fatally with the activity of spruce roots, and that would first become evident as poor growth or dying needles at the top of the tree.
Austrian pines are generally much tougher to kill than blue spruces, Mahoney says. The browning of the inner needles may well be normal fall needle drop, but the browning of the top is abnormal. Shoot borers, eriophyid mites or root stress could all be factors. Herbicides and winter salt may also be contributing.
Mahoney recommends that you get a firm diagnosis before attempting any controls. Stop at the UI Cooperative Extension System office in your county and pick up a tree diagnosis form. Attach a sample of the damage or some clear, close-up photos. The UI extension educator or a Master Gardener will get back in touch with you and help you minimize further damage, if possible.
If I leave the mayonnaise off my kids’ sandwiches, can I stop worrying about food poisoning in their lunch boxes?
Actually, mayonnaise is not the culprit in food-borne illness that it has been made out to be, says Sandy McCurdy, University of Idaho extension food safety specialist. The eggs in commercially prepared mayonnaise have been pasteurized. And, like other acid-containing salad dressings, mayonnaise actually slows the growth of bacteria.
When mayonnaise is combined with other ingredients, however, its now-diluted acid is less effective in controlling bacterial growth. So, for example, when potato salad goes "bad" at the family picnic, the mayonnaise hasn’t caused the problem; it has simply failed to prevent it.
The best way to ensure lunch-box food safety is to include a frozen juice box or cold pack if you’re packing sandwiches that include such perishable ingredients as meat, fish, eggs or poultry, says McCurdy. Freezing the sandwich itself also works well. Alternatively, choose foods that keep safely at room temperature, such as peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, dried sausages and meats like salami, pepperoni and jerky.
[READERS: Do you have a question about your home, yard or garden? Send it to HomeWise, University of Idaho Ag Communications, Moscow, ID 83844-2332 or e-mail it to homewise@uidaho.edu. Mention of proprietary products or firms does not constitute endorsement by the University of Idaho Cooperative Extension System or imply approval to the exclusion of other suitable products or firms.]