Daily Rounds: Ignorance About Stress; Asian Smokers Targeted; Behind Super-Gonorrhea; Hockey Rink Pollution

APA survey finds that many Americans don't understand how stress can undermine their health - Monitor on Psychology - "First the good news: The percentage of Americans who report feeling extreme stress dropped 10 percentage points since 2007 when APA conducted its first Stress in America survey, from 32 percent to 22 percent...But the bad news from APA's latest data is noteworthy: A significant number of respondents reported that stress has only a slight or no impact on their physical health (31 percent) or on their mental health (36 percent). That's true even though stress is a proven precursor of many chronic conditions." (Monitor on Psychology)

For many Asian New Yorkers, smoking is still a way of life - The New York Times - "The city’s Asian population has been stubbornly resistant to the otherwise successful efforts by the Bloomberg administration to curb smoking among New Yorkers. Smoking rates among the city’s Asian communities have not budged since 2002 — most notably among Asian men, despite decreases in the habit among almost every other demographic, according to data from the city’s health department. On Thursday, the department stepped up its appeals to Asian smokers." (The New York Times)

Untreatable gonorrhea and the rest of the so-called super-bugs - Slate - "Lost in the hurry to embrace this particular sky-is-falling medical story is an important and revealing fact: not all superbugs take the same path to ignominy. Gonorrhea, for example, hasn't moved to the front of the line on account of our pharmaceutical gluttony. There's another mortal sin at work: Lust. People like to have sex, and with each condom-free act, bacteria swarm from this body part to that again and again, yes, and one more time, yes yes. Yes. Simply put, the sheer velocity of people hooking up has overwhelmed our flimsy antibiotic defense." (Slate)

Air pollution in an unlikely spot: An indoor hockey arena- NPR-Shots - "Early last year, 31 people got sick after spending time at an unnamed indoor ice arena owned by a private school in New Hampshire. Health officials said a 19-year-old man showed up at a local hospital emergency room shortly after hockey practice, according to an account in the latest issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. He was hacking, short of breath and coughing up blood. Other players on his team were having similar problems. Same, too, for the guys on another team. Many wound up in the hospital. The problem? The ventilation system in the arena where they practices was on the fritz. So when workers at the arena spent an hour or so buffing up the ice with a propane-powered resurfacing machine, the exhaust, including nitrogen dioxide, stayed inside." (NPR - Shots)