Arctic medical research
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Cold stress may be present in terms of a risk for skin surface cooling (wind chill), extremity cooling and whole body cooling. Measures of cold stress differ for the various situations. ⋯ The cooling power can be easily converted into a required insulation value, that applies both to parts of the body and to the body as a whole. The value provides information about cold stress in two ways; (a) by specifying necessary behavioural adjustments in terms of required activity level and clothing insulation level, and (b) by quantifying the thermal imbalance and tolerance time, when protection worn does not provide sufficient insulation.
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Two recent surveys of adults and of children in the Canadian Arctic obtained information on smoking behaviour. By age nineteen, 71% of Inuit youth were current smokers compared to 63% of Dene/Métis youth and 43% of the Non-Native. Within each ethnic group, the general pattern of higher smoking rates among girls in almost all age groups was apparent. ⋯ Adult smoking rates in the Arctic were higher than rates in the national population. Inuit adults had the highest smoking rates, followed by the Dene and the Non-Native groups. Men and women in each of the ethnic groups in the Northwest Territories had higher smoking rates than their counterparts in the national population.