october specials - Southbridge Evening News

18 SPENCER NEW LEADER • Friday, October 1, 2010
State mandates training to reduce brain injuries
BRAIN
continued from page 1
number one priority, but it’s going
to be hard to get these parents to
take the test,” he said, citing parents’
schedules, possible language
barriers and other concerns.
Reaching the coaches, he said, is
much easier — his goal is to have
them take the online course by Oct.
1. Some have already done so,
although Davis admitted computer
problems stymied his own attempt
to do it recently.
“Football and head injuries, concussions
— it’s a part of the game.
It’s a major concern,” Davis
observed. He said he couldn’t count
how many such injuries he has
seen in his 30 years of involvement
with sports, but added, “I think I’ve
seen my share of them. I’ve seen
enough that [this law] is warranted.”
He noted that Southbridge has
outfitted its players with “revolutionary
helmets” this year and
started having a doctor and EMTs
on the field at football games Sept.
10.
At issue is the fact that blows to
the head — and sometimes even
blows that do not directly impact
the head, but cause whiplash — can
cause a wide range of problems
that may not be immediately apparent.
Depending on the severity and
frequency of such blows, the damage
can become permanent and
sometimes even lethal.
Although a concussed person
may be briefly knocked unconscious,
they often are not, and their
symptoms take a while to manifest.
Those can include headaches, memory
trouble, moodiness, confusion,
poor sleep and vomiting, among
others. Most mild cases heal within
a week or two, but doctors note it is
very important to let the process
take whatever time it takes (and the
law requires a doctor or similar
professional to approve in writing a
player’s return to the game).
According to the Traumatic
Brain Injury pages at the
University of Nebraska — Lincoln
website (tbi.unl.edu), such new
injuries have a chance of being
lethal even days or weeks afterward.
Such deaths are impossible to
predict and most common among
junior or senior high school athletes,
“however, any athlete who
returns to play too soon is a possible
candidate.”
“A second blow to the head, even
if it is a minor one, can result in a
loss of auto regulation of the
brain’s blood supply,” the site
states. “Loss of autoregulation
leads to brain swelling. This results
in increased intracranial pressure
and leads to herniation of the
brain. The average time from second
impact to brainstem failure is
quite rapid, taking two to five minutes.”
That’s a rare but catastrophic
event; far more common is what’s
called “dementia pugilistica” or
“Boxer’s syndrome,” in which
repeated head injuries cause longterm
brain and neurological damage.
Such a condition can occur in
many sports, not just boxing.
That kind of long-term risk is
why Davis argues the law is too narrow.
To him, independent youth
sports leagues and cheerleading
should be included even though the
Mass. Interscholastic Athletic
Association doesn’t technically
consider cheering a sport.
“Why not? They’re being thrown
around and tumbled around, and
they’re not even wearing helmets,”
Davis said about cheerleaders. “…
It should be across the board. If you
get hit enough in youth sports, you
might not even be able to play in
high school.”
The state Department of Public
Health is in charge of drafting any
regulations related to this law.
According to DPH spokesman Julia
Hurley, the online training was
designed by the National
Federation of Coaches, and
although cheerleaders are exempt,
the agency recommends their participation.
“The key take away message from
this law is, if a kid suffers a head
injury in practice or competition,
they MUST be taken out of the
game and not return until they
receive medical clearance,” Hurley
stated in e-mail. “DPH is working
with the MIAA, the Mass Medical
Society, and the Trainers’
Association, among others, to
develop return to play protocols
that we expect to complete by the
end of this calendar year.”
The department’s letter to school
districts notes two places people
can find the training:
http://www.nfhslearn.com/elective
Detail.aspx?courseID=15000 and
www.cdc.gov/Concussion.
Independent sports groups are
also exempt, but Spencer Soccer
Club President Joe White thinks
they shouldn’t be. To him, any
effort to reduce the chances and
effects of injuries is beneficial.
“We have the same players playing
for the school as for the town.
The only difference is the organization,”
he said, later adding he’d
require his players to participate in
his club’s training session even if
they have already taken it through
the school or some other sports
group.
“It might be overkill, but in all
honesty I’d rather sit through it
three times than not at all,” White
said. “… That way you know everybody
had it, and no one falls
through the cracks.”
As one of the law’s sponsors,
State Rep. Paul Kujawski, D-
Webster, said the Legislature recognizes
there are still some unresolved
issues, but supporters felt it
was important enough to get something
in place before the sports season
started this fall to promote
greater safety.
“We had to begin somewhere, and
eventually we’ll amend it and
expand it,” Kujawski said.
Acknowledging the difficulty that’s
likely in reaching some parents, he
added the legislators were mostly
concerned about making sure
coaches “know and can see what’s
going on.”
The bill was filed by Sen. Stephen
Baddour, D-Methuen, and Kujawski
said he signed on after seeing something
on TV in which several sports
figures talked about the detrimental
long-term effects such injuries
had had on their lives. One was
wrestler Chris Nowinski, who
Kujawski said “had a career where
he was very wealthy, and now he
has dementia, has fallen into a
severe state of depression, contemplated
suicide and is nowhere in
life.”
Nowinski’s entry on Wikipedia
notes he suffered post-concussion
symptoms for a year after a
wrestling match in Hartford,
prompting his retirement. He later
started the Sports Legacy Institute,
which supports research into an
injury-induced degenerative condition
called Chronic Traumatic
Encephalopathy.
According to the Aug. 18 New
York Times, Boston University
researchers now theorize that N.Y.
Yankees great Lou Gehrig and
many others diagnosed with the
disease that bears his name may
actually have been suffering from
CTE. Gehrig was known for “playing
through injuries like concussions,”
and had experienced several
over many years in both baseball
and football, the Times reported.
Gus Steeves may be reached at
(508) 909-4135, or by e-mail at
gsteeves@stonebridgepress.com.
Communities take part in DEA’s Drug Take-Back Day
DRUGS
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natural progression for me to want to get
these drugs off the street … and not have people
flush them down the toilet and damage
the environment,” she said before the event.
Afterward, she noted that the recycling
center already had a line of cars awaiting
entry when it opened, and observers later
noted a “rainbow” of pills in the collection
bin. Kaminski said the most common drug
received was warfarin (a blood thinner commonly
sold under the brand name
Coumadin), and she was surprised to receive
quite a bit of nitroglycerin (a heart medicine).
That drug was the only one that commonly
came in small glass bottles, “and its
pills are so tiny you can hardly see them,”
Kaminski said.
“We were very surprised. I didn’t anticipate
as many people participating as they
did,” she said. “Some people came with
garbage bags full.”
Protecting the environment might seem
like an odd interest for such an event, especially
since the DEA’s focus is definitely on
preventing diversion to illegal use.
According to the agency’s August press
release promoting the day, “medicines that
languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible
to diversion, misuse and abuse. Rates of
prescription drug abuse in the United States
are increasing at alarming rates, as are the
number of accidental poisonings and overdoses
due to these drugs.”
According to data at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention website, that
trend isn’t new. The site has a graphic showing
how unintentional drug overdose deaths
have taken on a “hockey-stick” growth rate
over the last 40 years, exceeding 27,600 in
2007. (That figure, however, fails to distinguish
between prescription and illegal
drugs.)
The site notes that “prescription or overthe-counter
drugs used non-medically” cause
an equal number of emergency room visits
as do illegal drugs. Almost 58 percent of the
first group has been cases involving opioid
painkillers (including Oxycontin) or benzodiazapine
sedatives.
Leicester Police Chief James Hurley said
his department encounters someone in possession
of prescription drugs they shouldn’t
have about once a week, and those cases often
involve multiple drugs. To him, it is driven by
several factors, including greater availability
of drugs in general, often “pilfered” by
youths from their parents’ legal supply.
“I see us as a society that’s becoming more
and more when we’re not feeling well, we
want a pill,” he said.
All too often, though, people don’t know
what to do with those pills when the illness
passes or the pills expire. Historically, it was
common practice — and even encouraged —
to just flush them, but studies in recent years
have been shown that the pharmaceuticals
are passing through sewer treatment plants
and having a detrimental impact on Nature.
This month’s Conservation Magazine, for
example, includes an article on severe antibiotic-resistant
infections that are killing
aquatic mammals around the world.
Researchers aren’t yet certain how they happen,
but know there is a human connection.
They’re becoming concerned some microbes
could decimate endangered species and/or
“jump back to land and sweep through
human populations,” author Rebecca Kessler
wrote.
“Widespread use of antibiotics in medicine
and agriculture has given rise to bacteria
that are invulnerable to many drugs,”
Kessler reported. “These resistant bacteria
have started spilling into the environment
and trickling into a variety of species … and
a whopping 16 percent [of samples tested in a
three-year study] were resistant to five or
more [antibiotics]. The star of the show was
found in a harp seal … that [microbe] was
resistant to 13 out of 16 antibiotics tested.”
The ecological impact of many drugs is
poorly understood, but studies have found
dozens of them in public water supplies and
David Dore photo
Leicester Recycling Coordinator Ruth Kaminski
pours pills into a collection container during
National Drug Take-Back Day Saturday, Sept. 25.
rivers in small quantities. In some cases,
they were flushed directly, as intact doses. In
other cases, they passed through the person
who took them and were not completely
metabolized. And in still other cases, they
ended up in landfills, but leached into
groundwater.
Hurley said Saturday’s plan was to give the
drugs to the State Police, who would arrange
for them to be burned.
A page at the University of Arizona’s
Water Center website notes that drugs in the
water first became an issue in Germany in
the 1990s, but that was largely because earlier
observations by U.S. scientists of sewage
sludge containing aspirin, caffeine and nicotine,
and groundwater containing a cholesterol-lowering
drug were ignored.
Since then, the U.S. Geological Survey has
launched a nationwide study of hundreds of
water bodies to identify pharmaceuticals,
agricultural chemicals and other manmade
contaminants. Numerous links discussing
that research are at
http://toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc.html;
the first one listed (as of Friday, Sept. 24)
detailed findings of antidepressants in fish,
water and sediment up to 5 miles downstream
from treatment plants.
Gus Steeves may be reached at (508) 909-4135,
or by e-mail at
gsteeves@stonebridgepress.com.
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