Sulfur

For some dental professionals, it's little more than a marketing ploy. For a specialist in Philadelphia, it's a rip-off of his earlier work. But for 75-year-old Frances Brower, it was an answer to her prayer to be rescued from the bad breath that has haunted her since early adolescence. "Recently I said to the Lord, 'Dear God, this has been going on since I was 11 years old," said Brower, who was moved to prayer by a 6-year-old granddaughter's complaint about Grandma's halitosis.

Overwrought at what seemed to me to be a typical smattering of pimples, my teenage daughter had been begging for months to see a dermatologist. But I'd insisted on exhausting all other approaches before going to the expense. After all, I reasoned, how hard could it be to clear up a little acne? So I proceeded to spend a small fortune on over-the-counter products that did little to improve her complexion and even sprang for a facial that left her skin looking even more angry and inflamed.

Mildred Cohn, a chemist who overcame both religious and sexual prejudice to make major contributions in applying physics to problems of biology, died of respiratory failure Oct. 12 at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. She was 96. Refusing to accept the limitations imposed on her by others, Cohn worked with four Nobel laureates over the course of her career, eventually earning the nation's highest science award, the National Medal of Science, in her own right. Cohn pioneered the use of stable isotopic tracers to study the mechanisms of enzymes, which are the proteins that carry out chemical reactions within the cell.

The California Air Resources Board may consider lowering the amount of sulfur allowed in the state's gasoline so autos can more effectively cut smog-producing emissions. The board's staff has drafted a preliminary proposal to lower the amount of sulfur allowed in gas from a maximum of 80 parts per million for any single batch to a maximum of 20 ppm to 30 ppm, according to documents released Monday.

In a move that could further drive up the price of diesel fuel but that promises to virtually eliminate the belching black smoke from diesel engines, the Environmental Protection Agency today ordered an 80% cut in the sulfur in the fuel over three years. The new rule will add between 1.8 cents and 2.3 cents per gallon to the cost of the fuel, heavily used within the transportation industry as a fuel for trucks, buses and locomotives. Some passenger cars also have diesel engines.

A ulfur spill on the Golden State Freeway near Griffith Park forced the closing of the northbound lanes for more than an hour Monday evening, creating a lengthy traffic jam, authorities said. The four northbound lanes were closed just south of the Ventura Freeway from 5:45 p.m. to 7 p.m., California Highway Patrol Officer Dan Loughrey said. The northbound transition lanes to the westbound Ventura Freeway also were closed, Loughrey said.

More than 600 million people live in cities where the average level of sulfur dioxide in the air is beyond the guidelines set by the World Health Organization, a joint report by WHO and the U.N. Environment Program said Wednesday. It said that because of particles suspended in the air, mainly as a result of burning coal and wood or of dust raised by traffic, the number of people living in unsafe urban areas was even higher, about 1.25 billion.

A double-tanker truck overturned and exploded Wednesday, spilling about 4,000 gallons of a hazardous sulfur compound and temporarily blocking Interstate 15, authorities said. Motorists stopped by the accident 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles were evacuated because of irritating but non-poisonous gases thrown off by the fire, San Bernardino County Fire Department Capt. Tom Andreas said. No one was injured in the accident, which occurred shortly before 2 a.m.

An agreement on a new cleanup at an abandoned Sierra sulfur mine that has polluted nearby streams for years was announced Thursday by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Keith Takata, head of the EPA's Superfund program for the Pacific Southwest, said his agency reached the Leviathan Mine agreement with California's Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Except for the moan of the wind along the eaves of Craig (Fuzzy) Lewis' weather-beaten tin-roofed shack, it is as quiet as a country graveyard up here at the old Coalinga Sulphur Baths. And it's been that way ever since the 2,000-barrel-a-day oil well started going dry a quarter of a century ago, forcing the bath operation to shut down. Today, the old well, which produced 118-degree water since 1912, yields nary a drop. Lewis has to haul water up from town for his personal use.