Take up a hobby — and die early?

Press, 17 December 1976, Page 13

Take up a hobby — and die early?

By

LLOYD TIMBERLAKE,

of Reuter, through NZPA.

Doctors who often advise patients to take up a hobby to relax, are looking more closely at hobbies as possible sources of i patients’ complaints. According to the weekly medical journal, “General Practitioner,” doctors should be asking: “What are your hobbies?” The increasing technological complexity of modern hobbies is putting many creative users of leisure at risk. People who do their own car mainten-

ance, building, woodwork, painting, or decorating pick up the same “industrial diseases” as those doing these jobs for a living. Asbestos dust can cause fata! lung diseases; oilsoaked overalls can produce cancer of the scrotum; microscopic pieces of metal from drilling pierce the eye; and the epoxy resins now used as carpenters glue can give sensitive skins a nasty rash.

On the problems of diagnosis, the journal notes the case of an American who took up the gentle craft of furniture restoration upon retirement. In his hobby he used a com-

mercial paint stripper in his basement which caused concentrations of carbon monoxide to develop. He suffered a myocardial infarction — blockage of the blood supply to the wall of the heart — and had two strokes as he continued using the stripper. A third stroke killed him. It was only after his death that an environmental medicine team connected the heart trouble to the paint stripper.

Sculptors can pick up silicosis — a lung disease also known as potters’ rot — while firing statues and pots. Amateur potters also run a risk of absorbing lead contained in the glaze.

The silver used to coat film can also be absorbed into the body of photographers who develop their own film. The resulting disease, called argyria, turns the skin blue, but seems to do no other damage. The first recorded case occurred in a man who habitually held a piece of exposed film in his mouth.

In the garden, besides the obvious risk of losing

a toe to the lawn mower, there is a problem of overdoses of various insecticides. The philosophical pastime of fishing has its dangers, such as Weils disease, a type of jaundice caused by contact with water contaminated by rats’ urine and faeces. Pigeons can cause pigeon fanciers’ lung. Parrots may pass along the viral infection psittacosis. And roundworms in dogs and cats may bring toxocariasis, a disease involving allergic reactions from which

two per cent of apparently healthy people in Britain may suffer. “General Practitioner” premature deafness in teenagers on noisy discotheques, where the noise level is much higher than the industrial limit of 90 decibels over an eight-hour shift. And, apparently, there is no escape. Bookcollectors, subject to no machinery, animals, or noise, can come down with a variety of the “curse of the Pharaohs.”

Those who first explored the Pyramids were killed by what was thought to be a curse, but was actually the spores in ancient dust. Less deadly forms of the syndrome can be contracted through undisturbed dust, such as the disorders suffered by librarians handling very old volumes.