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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 1988)
Friday, November 4,1988 The Battalion Page 7 E BAND irts ^uad -3456 World/Nation Man crusades against ‘poison’ sold to public by food industry I OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A multimillio- | naire who nearly died from a heart attack 122 years ago has spent $2 million on a [crusade to pressure food industry giants into making healthier products, but the companies say his criticisms are mis guided. Phil Sokolof, 65, placed advertis- ments in newspapers this week depicting nine products he says are portrayed as [healthy foods, but are “poisoning” Americans with saturated fats. They include Nabisco’s Triscuit crackers, Procter & Gamble’s Crisco shortening, Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran cereal, Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish crackers, Keebler’s Club crackers, Sun shine’s Hydrox cookies and non-dairy coffee creamers Coffee Swirl from Kraft, Carnation’s Coffeemate and Bor den’s Creamora. Saturated fats have the effect of boost ing the blood’s cholesterol level, accord ing to scientists. An excess of choles terol, a waxy compound, can clog '£ P PS d’s most and to be lies—is those >0 yearly nd )l year, admitted neor ligibility, earances. James IROP hrop drop is IN! le past idge Ellis has . of Texas Law ough on crima iun I M E Bacteria working against toxic PCBs :chers ■■wm Inriudk Tu Net ' ■"» «»?■> A,. fCER SPECK IGESlNGlf j & CHEES1 2 DOZEN V ROLLS 2 OR PEPPERM 9 95 DELIVER! -666 RVEYM ase mention i when orderiii WASHINGTON (AP) — Oxygen- starved bacteria working in sediment be neath the Hudson River are transforming toxic PCB compounds into less danger ous forms, raising hopes of a significant easing of a major PCB cleanup problem nationwide, researchers said Thursday. ! The resulting types of PCBs do not ac cumulate in living tissue, a government scientist said. The researchers from Michigan State I University said their results with anaero bic or oxygen-free bacteria could mean that not every contaminated sediment would have to be cleaned up, and clean ups that do proceed might be much l€ss risky than people have assumed. “If it is true, it could have enormous significance,” said Richard D. Morgens- tem, head of the Office of Policy Analy sis in the Environmental Protection Agency. Sally Valdez Cogliani, an EPA eco logist and sediment specialist, said the discovery showed promise, but she was more restrained than Morgenstern. “Probably most situations are not anaer obic. I’d wonder about its general appli cability,” she said. PCBs are a common toxic waste prob lem. In some of the better-known cases, they have contaminated harbor sedi ments at New Bedford, Mass., and Wau kegan, Ill. Millions of pounds of PCBs were used from 1929 to 1977. The nation’s utilities are faced with the massive task of drain ing them from their transformers by the early 1990s, and PCB spills all over the landscape are a frequent problem. The Michigan State findings appear to substantiate a theory put forward by General Electric Corp., source of most Hudson River PCBs, in a dispute with New York State over cleanup plans for the river. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it wanted to dredge up and place in a land fill 360,000 cubic yards of PCB “hot spots” in the Hudson River above Al bany resulting from legal GE waste dis charges from 1951 to 1973. R.W. Groneman, spokesman for the department, said of the new findings, “It’s a good theory, but what does it mean in the real world?” Until EPA banned manufacture in 1977, some mixtures of the 209 possible PCB compounds, polychlorinated biphe nyls, were widely used as coolants and insulators in electrical equipment such as transformers and capacitors. The fluids do not transmit electricity and are ex tremely difficult to burn. Congress required EPA to act because of findings that PCBs appeared to cause cancer, skin and reproductive disorders in laboratory animals. PCBs accumulate in fatty tissue, and findings of high levels in fish led New York authorities to ban the taking of striped bass from the Hudson or ocean waters inshore. arteries, thereby contributing to heart at tacks. The American Heart Association rec ommends a daily diet with no more than 30 percent of calories from fats and no more than 10 percent from saturated fats. Sokolof, the owner of a construction equipment company, blames high cho lesterol for the near-fatal heart attack he suffered in 1966 at the age of 43. His fa ther and a brother-in-law died of heart at tacks. “There were no warnings,” he said. “I was thin. I exercised. I didn’t smoke. The only thing wrong was I had high cholesterol.” In 1985, he wrote a $1 million check to establish the National Heart Savers Association. He has spent another $1 million to spread his warning about high cholesterol. Heart Savers is registered in Nebraska as a non-profit organization. Sokolof has provided 99 percent of its funds and is the only staff member, he said. Sokolof said his brush with death, combined with a 1984 government study on cholesterol, prompted his effort. “It is a crusade. It is from the heart,” he said Thursday. But the targeted companies said the advertisements that ran Tuesday in The New York Times and New York Post Computer viruses strike nationwide Associated Press A computer virus infected systems across the country Thursday, afflicting a federal research center and six major uni versities, including Massachusetts Insti tute of Technology, but officials said they were unaware of any damage. The bug infected hundreds of comput ers but apparently did not destroy any files or research, said Professor James Bruce, vice president for information systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Viruses, the communicable diseases of computers, are tiny programs which are created in computers either as a joke or vandalism. They can attach them selves to other programs and spread through shared software. Rivera hit during audience brawl NEW YORK (AP) —- Geraldo Rivera was hit in the nose by a flying chair on his talk-show set Thursday as he tried to break up a melee involving right-wing “skinheads” and black civil rights activ ist Roy Innis. The brawl broke out when one of the guests on the show, John Metzger of California, began shouting racist re marks at the audience during the taping and called Innis an “Uncle Tom,” said Jennifer Geertz, spokeswoman for the syndicated “Geraldo’ show. Innis walked over to Metzger, his fists balled, then turned to another young man next to him who was warning him off. Metzger then began to stand and Innis put his hands around Metzger’s neck. Supporters of Metzger then moved to ward Innis, punches were thrown and au dience members — more skinheads among them — stormed the set, the vi deotape showed. “About half the audience emptied in a free-swinging melee,” Geertz said. “Punches were thrown, fists were fly ing, bodies were flying.” At one point, a chair was thrown and Rivera was struck in the head. Rivera, dabbing at blood on his nose, called for calm as several pushing and shoving matches continued around him. Eventually, studio security escorted the sKinheads oui, sue said, and Rivera re sumed the show. Rivera declined medical treatment and taped two more shows, she said. “These racist thugs have to know that we’re not backing down,” Rivera said in a statement. “They’re like roaches who scurry in the light of exposure. ’ ’ The show’s topic was “hate-mon gers,” and featured members of the White Aryan Resistance Youth, The American Front and Skinheads of the National Resistance. Other guests included Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman, Innis and Bayonne, N.J. resi dent Bill Stump and his wife, who said they were attacked and terrorized by skinheads at a PATH train station Satur day night. In their mildest form, a message flashes on a user’s screen; as malignan cies, they can destroy data and cripple a computer. “We’re not crippled,” Bruce said. “It first showed up in the middle of the night and spread very virulently during the day.” At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, in Livermore, Calif., spokesman Jeff Garberson said a com puter problem was discovered late Wednesday. “We . . . took action to contain it, which means to stop it from spreading to other computer systems. We were suc cessful by about one in the morning,” about five hours after it was discovered. “This is for unclassified, non-secured systems,” said Garberson. “It did not affect our classified national defense sys tem at all. ” “This has the feel of somebody who was sitting around thinking one night over a beer, ‘Hey, I can write a virus. Let’s see what happens,”’ said Charley Kline, senior research programmer with the Computing Services Office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champ- aign, Ill. Kline said he uses the term “virus” to mean a self-spreading program, though some call such a program a “worm” un less it does damage. He said he knew of no damage caused by the program Thurs day. Kline said the virus entered the system through a nationwide network, and be gan having the local system generate copies of the virus. Earthquake hits Central America, tremors felt as far as Puerto Rico SAN SALVADOR (AP>—Terrified residents of earthquake-scarred Central America and southern Mexico ran into the streets Thursday when a strong tem- bor rattled the region. One death and mi nor damage was reported. Later Thursday, a strong earthquake shook buildings and sent people into the streets in Puerto Rico, but an official said there were no immediate reports of dam age or injuries in the Caribbean island. The Central American quake was felt at 8:47 a.m.. In Mexico, residents of the southern town of Tapachula thought the local vol cano was erupting. In San Salvador, where a 1986 earthquake killed 1,500 and injured 20,000, thousands of people took to the streets in panic. The quake also was felt in Guatemala, where the National Emergency Commit tee went on alert, and to a lesser extent in Honduras and Nicaragua. A 1972 earth quake killed 10,000 people in Nicaragua and caused extensive damage to Mana gua, the capital. Readings on the tremor varied. The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., said it measured 6 on the Richter scale. The Institute of Seismology at the University of Costa Rica said it mea sured 6.5. An earthquake with a magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale is capable of doing serious damage. The Richter scale is an open-ended gauge of energy released by an earthquake as measured by ground motion recorded on a seismograph. In Guatemala City, the Guatemalan capital, a municipal worker digging a ditch was buried alive when the quake dislodged a pile of earth, police said. The man was identified as Jesus Pitan, 50. Maj. Humberto Fuentes Soria of Gua temala’s National Emergency Commit tee said the temblor damaged 18 homes in the western provinces of Totonicapan and Chimaltenango. He said walls cracked in several public buildings in western provinces. In Puerto Rico, the 3:42 p.m. quake measured 5.7 on the Richter scale, said William MacCann, director of the Uni versity of Puerto Rico’s Seismological Network. An aftershock measuring 4 on Richter scale followed, he said. McCann said earthquake was the strongest in Puerto Rico since 1979, when a temblor of 5.9 shook the island. He said the quake’s epicenter was in the Atlantic Ocean in the extreme north western port city of Aguadilla, 80 miles west of San Juan. But the tremor was felt throughout the island, which is 100 miles long and 35 miles wide. were unfair and misrepresented their products. .“It’s irresponsible,” Joseph Stewart, a senior vice president for Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, Mich., said Thursday. “For someone to claim it is the poison ing of the American public is a gross ex aggeration . ’ ’ Sokolof’s biggest complaint is with companies that portray their foods as healthy by proclaiming “no choles terol,” “low salt,” “non-dairy,” and “made with 100 percent vegetable short ening.” The oils most commonly used are palm and coconut oils, which are highly saturated vegetable oils. Companies use the oils because they are the most expe ditious way to extend shelf life, he said. Kellogg’s Stewart said Sokolof’s ads “confuse legitimate efforts to educate people about the cholesterol problem.” Fats, he said, are a necessary part of a healthy diet. If consumers believe Sokolof, he said, they should eliminate every product that contains fat,, including cheese, whole milk, beef, chicken and pork. “They all have saturated fat,” he said. Cholesterol itself is only found in ani mal products, including meat and dairy items like cheese, whole milk and eggs. Grand opening Pizza Roni 764-7664 99 plus tax $7 $10 with This Coupon Supreme 12" pizza plus 2 Free drinks 99 Supreme 16" pizza plus tax plus 3 Free drinks CRIMINAL. DEFENSE ATTORNEYS W.W. Vance ’71 Kyle Hawthorne ’79 DWI • Felonies • Misdemeanors Free Initial Consultations 776-2244 Vance, Bruchez & Goss 3131 Briarcrest Drive/Bryan Not certified by the Ttexas Board of Legal Specialization ELECT Justice Bob Thomas Chief Justice OF THE 10th COURT OF APPEALS ..experience is the difference. CTWP "Best Prices In Town!" 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