
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 3, 1994                   TAG: 9411120012
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VITAL SIGNS

"VITAL SIGNS 1994, The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future," is a publication of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington think tank that, well, watches the world.

In each annual update, "Vital Signs" attempts to answer the question Ed Koch asked constantly when he was mayor of New York City: How are we doing? It tracks various indicators for taking the globe's pulse, everything from grain harvests to Third World debt, AIDS cases to arms exports, refugee flows to natural gas production.

Facts here and there leap out as significant, for some reason or another. Did you know, for example, that more than 500 species of insects and mites are now resistant to the pesticides widely used to control them? Or that China has eclipsed the United States as the world's leading consumer of red meat? Or that polluted drinking water, collapsing health care and rising levels of cigarette smoking have contributed to a recent decline in life expectancy in Russia?

Speaking of cigarettes, they account for some of the book's more depressing data. World cigarette production continues to rise. It stood at 5.46 trillion cigarettes in 1993, having gradually increased over the years from 1.69 trillion made in 1950. The good news is that smoking is declining among adults in the United States. The bad news is that young people are continuing to pick up the addiction, and tobacco companies have stepped up efforts to push cigarette sales abroad, especially in the Third World.

Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco and the Liggett Group have come on strong in Russia and neighboring republics, in many cases taking over factories, building new ones, and launching intensive advertising campaigns. Partly as a result, cigarette production in Russia rose by 13 billion to 161 billion in 1993, a cruel statistic with clear implications for Russia's future life expectancy rates.

On the plus side of the ledger, Worldwatch reports that bicycle production is on the rise again. An estimated 108 million bicycles were manufactured across the globe in 1993, beating auto production by nearly three to one. The number of U.S. commuters who bike to work has tripled in the past decade to an estimated 3 million - no doubt improving their vital signs.

by CNB