Risk

Marylanders are more likely to be exposed to toxic chemicals in their houses and on their jobs than in the environment, two advocacy groups said in a report released yesterday.The report, by the National Environmental Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, estimates that U.S. manufacturers produce and use 50 times more pounds of chemicals than they emit into the air and water or dispose of as waste.The environmentalists made that case yesterday at a news conference called to urge Congress to require industries to report the quantities and types of chemicals they produce each year.

"Risk surrounds everything worth having," reads the screen saver on John Fox's computer.It's his own quote, and it seems an apt description of how the 58-year-old financier runs his business, and his life.Take, for instance, the evening a trio of muggers snatched the purse of Mr. Fox's wife back in 1987. The couple were just returning to their Otterbein townhouse when one of the three young men grabbed the purse and took off.Mr. Fox -- without a sane thought for his own welfare, he now recalls -- sprinted after the guy, chased him down a dead-end alley and "beat the crap out of him," as he delicately describes it. (The Foxes soon moved out of the city.

With the New England Patriots roaring through the NFL like no team in recent memory, football fans have perfect seasons on the brain. As is often the case, the happenings of reality filter down to fantasy. I went on vacation with college friends last week, and as soon as my buddy Dan saw me, he said, "I think you might want to write a column about my fantasy football team." Going into the season, he wondered whether he had reached a bit for Tom Brady and left himself thin at running back by relying on rookie Adrian Peterson.

Despite sweeping new warnings that the nation's most popular painkillers can harm hearts, stomachs and skin, many Americans are going to go right on taking them, saying the relief is worth the risk. The popular arthritis drug Bextra last week became the second Cox-2 painkiller pulled from the market while the Food and Drug Administration pinned its highest warnings on Celebrex and nearly 20 other common prescription-strength drugs such as Mobic, Motrin, Naprosyn and ibuprofen. The move tainted trusted remedies and replaced them with nothing but confusing alternatives, prompting many patients to count pills and ration what's left of medications that have worked for them.

Q: This may sound crazy, but I dread our family vacation because I'm afraid my 10-year-old will get appendicitis. I did when I was about that age, and I got very sick. How would I know if my son had appendicitis? We are going to be camping in the mountains.A: As far as we know, appendicitis doesn't run in families and there is no reason why a 10-year-old should be a special risk, so we don't think you need to be more concerned than anyone else. The chance that your son will come down with appendicitis during one particular week of his life is very small.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve is expected to pause today after 17 consecutive interest-rate increases, ending a streak of credit tightening that has lifted short-term lending rates from 1 percent to 5.25 percent since June 2004. Still, analysts warn that the Fed may raise rates in the months ahead if signs persist that inflation is growing worse. Countering that threat, however, is the risk that further rate increases could tip the slowing economy into recession. As the Fed's rate-setting Open Market Committee weighs the competing risks today, it is expected to pause to buy time for more data to accumulate and show which risk is more threatening.

NEW YORK -- USF&G is among five major property and casualty insurers at risk if there is a severe economic downturn, Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer interest lobby, said in a extensive report on the industry issued yesterday."

Circumcising adult males in two African countries reduced their risk of contracting HIV by half, according to studies that could prompt calls for programs to encourage circumcision. Evidence from the clinical trials in Uganda and Kenya was so overwhelming that the National Institutes of Health closed them so researchers could offer the procedure to all participants. "This was pretty much of an unequivocal type of decision based on the data," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said at a news briefing yesterday.

A commonly used antibiotic increases the risk of sudden cardiac death, particularly when taken with certain blood pressure medications and other drugs, doctors said yesterday. The antibiotic, erythromycin, is used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections, from bronchitis to pneumonia. The increased risk has been known for years, but this is the first study to establish the extent of the hazard. "We tried to put a quantity on the risk," said one of the authors, Michael Stein, a clinical pharmacologist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

All Deborah D'Domenicus knew as a little girl about the doctor's procedure is that it made her ears hurt. She developed such terrible earaches that her parents had to hold her sobbing in bed.Yesterday, she told Maryland legislators about the pain that came later in life -- a tumor in her right ear, chronic sinus infections, migraine headaches and hearing loss that she blames on the nasal radium treatments she received as a 9-year-old.D'Domenicus came to Annapolis with a half-dozen men and women who underwent the same treatment as children to urge that a state task force be established to examine the health risks.