Marching Band and Other Hazards of High School

By Richard Morin
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Does high school marching band make you sick?

Is nail polish a health hazard?

Do pimples damage teenagers' self-esteem?

Yes, yes and no, say three precocious high-schoolers who were in Washington last weekend with 57 other regional finalists of the Young Epidemiology Scholars Competition, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the College Board.

Top prizes went to Natalia Nazarewicz, an 18-year-old senior at Oak Ridge High School in Tennessee who surveyed more than 1,000 high school students and found that nearly a third had engaged in deliberate self-harm such as cutting or burning their skin. She shared honors with Aman Prasad, an 18-year-old senior from Pocatello, Idaho, who found that vigorous physical activity may offset the effects of minor mood disorders. Each won a $50,000 scholarship.

But three other studies were similarly noteworthy and more redolent of the high school experience.

Heather Stone, who attends Allegany High School in Cumberland, Md., wondered whether high-schoolers in marching band caught colds and other respiratory infections more often than other students. "I noticed that lots of kids were getting sick and that we were marching around in a dust cloud. I wondered if the two were related," said Stone, a four-year member of her school's marching band.

So she monitored 30 band members and 30 non-band students in July and August of 2002. Stone found that 13 band members had colds during the study period, compared with only one non-band member -- a far bigger difference than would be expected by chance alone. Despite the drippy colds, she loved marching band. "It's a great activity," said Stone, who is heading to Smith College in the fall.

Steven Benay, 16, a junior at Smithtown High School West in Smithtown, N.Y., administered a series of questions that psychologists use to measure self-esteem to 257 boys and girls at his high school. They were also asked about their complexions. He found no correlation between acne and self-esteem -- good news to pimple-prone teens, but a result that he acknowledged "was highly inconsistent with previous research."

Michael Ding, 16, a junior at Glen Cove High School in Glen Cove, N.Y., decided on his study topic "after my mother complained about feeling dizzy after using nail polish." Ding found that 59 percent of nail products in three drugstores he canvassed contained ingredients known to be harmful to health. Moreover, one in eight nail products had no list of ingredients, in violation of Food and Drug Administration regulations.

Ding interviewed 239 girls at his high school and found that a third had experienced dizziness, nausea, allergies or headaches after applying nail polish. He also found that a third began painting their nails before they were 6 years old.

Disturbing findings indeed. But, wow, doing research on the health hazards of makeup -- what a cool way to meet girls.

"Naw, not really," he said. "But I got good results, so it worked out."

When It's Okay to Lie

When it comes to helping to impress a friend about another friend, people prefer lying liars who lie to truth tellers.

That's what psychology professors Beth Pontari of Furman University and Barry Schlenker of the University of Florida found when they attempted to see whether people think honesty is always the best policy.

Not always, they found. Two separate studies revealed that people thought it was okay to tell white lies to attempt to help friends make a good impression on a loved one or a colleague at work.

Pontari and Schlenker also found those who always told the truth were respected more by these study subjects. But test subjects also reported that they liked those who tweaked the truth more than people who were monotonically honest, the professors report in the June issue of Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

Who Would Have Thought?

Beautiful Women, Stress Relief and the Cookie Cue

"The Siren's Call: Terror Management and the Threat of Men's Sexual Attraction to Women" by Mark J. Landau, et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 1. A University of Arizona psychologist and his colleagues conduct experiments with undergraduates and find that men are often scared by attractive women because they remind men they are "an impulsive, animalistic, material and finite piece of biological protoplasm" and will someday die.

"Experimental Comparison of the Psychological Benefits of Aerobic Exercise, Humor and Music" by Attila Szabo, Humor, Vol. 18, No. 3. A British researcher finds that spending 20 minutes watching an episode of the TV show "Friends" or listening to New Age music is just as effective as aerobic exercise in lowering stress and more beneficial than sitting quietly.

"Cues of Parental Investment as a Factor in Attractiveness" by Gary L. Brase, Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol. 27, No. 2. A University of Missouri psychologist found that women report they would be more likely to have sex with a man shown in a photograph giving a cookie to a baby than with a man shown taking a cookie away from a baby.