The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act extends new protections to an estimated 25 million Americans in so-called "job lock," a situation in which employees don’t switch jobs for fear of losing coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions.

The legislation includes a phased-in 80% tax deduction for health-insurance premiums for the self-employed by 2006, up from the current 30%. It also allows for the creation of 750,000 medical savings accounts that, much like individual retirement accounts or 401(k) savings plans, would enable individuals to set aside tax-free contributions toward routine medical expenses. Most of the bill’s provisions will take effect July 1, 1997.

The legislation was jointly sponsored by Sens. Nancy Kassebaum (R., Kan.) and Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) and enjoyed widespread support, passing the Senate unanimously and the House 421-2 earlier this month, and both parties sought to claim credit for it Wednesday.

"Today we declare a victory for millions of Americans and their families," President Clinton said. "No longer will you live in fear of losing your health insurance because of the state of your health."

"The American people should ask why it took President Clinton more than three years to support these common-sense reforms, which he previously threatened to veto," Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole said in a statement.

As the parties quibble over the credit, Democrats have done their utmost to reclaim the spotlight during this week’s convention interlude, using the White House as a backdrop to stage several elaborate ceremonies. For Mr. Clinton, this week’s bill signings for a higher minimum wage, health-insurance and welfare reforms and business tax breaks provide a high-profile way for him to seize attention and credit in the wake of the Republicans’ national convention, and in the buildup to his own party gathering next week in Chicago.

En route to the Democratic convention by train next week, the president will seek to keep the spotlight with daily announcements of new initiatives. He’s also expected to clear new restrictions on tobacco marketing Friday.

In particular, Mr. Clinton will propose a still-evolving initiative to help welfare recipients find work through a combination of tax and wage subsidies for employers who hire them. The aid would be coordinated with local governments, aides say.

In addition, the president is expected to pull one long-pending proposal from the White House shelf to permit homeowners to avoid capital-gains taxes on the sale of a primary residence. Under current law, capital-gains tax relief goes to those age 55 and over. In practice, removing the age limit wouldn’t have a major impact since many younger taxpayers sell a home then use the proceeds to buy a more expensive one, avoiding capital-gains taxes in that way.

The White House zeal to pitch new ideas, if minor ones, reflects the competition with Robert Dole now that the Republican presidential candidate has put forth an ambitious tax-cut program. Mr. Clinton’s political advisers would like bolder strokes, but his economic advisers for now have prevailed in limiting initiatives to ideas that have relatively little if any federal cost.

Teenage drug use has more than doubled since 1992, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Nearly 11% of 12-year-olds to 17-year-olds used drugs on a monthly basis last year, and that number has climbed steadily from a low of 5.3% in 1992.

While teenage drug use has increased, usage by older Americans has declined in the same period, and overall levels of drug use have remained flat, the reports said. An estimated 12.8 million Americans used illegal drugs last year, the same rate as in 1992.

At campaign stops Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole immediately sought to capitalize on the rise in teenage drug use, depicting the increase as the result of a lax Democratic White House.

"This is nothing short of a national tragedy," Mr. Dole told the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual convention in Louisville, Ky. He vowed "to make the drug war priority No. 1 once again" and said he would host a conference of drug-abuse experts at the White House "to find solutions to put us back on the course to absolute victory."

In response, White House press secretary Michael McCurry insisted the drug war remains a "high priority" with the president. Asked if Mr. Clinton bears some responsibility for the increase in drug use, as some Republicans have asserted, Mr. McCurry said drug experts first noted the upward trend in 1991, before Mr. Clinton’s election. "He understands that there’s more that needs to be done, which is what he has consistently been doing in his time here," Mr. McCurry said.

Tuesday’s political back-and-forth was the latest in a series of Republican attacks on the White House for granting security clearances to staffers who had recently tested positive for illegal drugs. Republican leaders leaked summaries of the reports well in advance of their release, attempting to score some last minute points with voters before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week.

The move comes after some Republicans suggested an announcement earlier this month that juvenile crime had dropped for the first time in nearly a decade had been timed to steal the spotlight from their convention last week in San Diego.

Aside from the rise in drug use by teenagers, Tuesday’s reports also revealed that marijuana usage increased sharply while cocaine and heroin-usage remained the same. An estimated 9.8 million Americans used marijuana in 1995, comprising 77% of illicit drug users.

Additionally, there were nearly 532,000 drug-related hospital emergency room visits last year, nearly the same rate as in 1994. Cocaine-related cases made up 27% of all hospital visits in 1995, while another 14% were heroin-related. Over half of the visits were made by people who had overdosed, the reports said.

The abortion pill cleared a major hurdle on Friday when an advisory panel recommended that the Food and Drug Administration approve the product. The FDA could approve RU-486, also known as mifepristone, for use in the U.S. by early fall.

Three weeks ago, the same FDA advisory panel ruled that certain combinations of existing birth-control pills could safely and effectively be used as "morning-after pills" to prevent pregnancy when taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse. Some antiabortion groups argue this process can amount to abortion.

Meanwhile, the combination of methotrexate, a cancer and arthritis drug, and misoprostol, an ulcer drug, also has been found to induce abortion. Richard Hausknecht, an obstetrician at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine last summer that the combination caused abortions in 171 of 178 patients, with side effects similar to RU-486.

Since then, Dr. Hausknecht says he has been besieged by calls from American doctors interested in the method, although most physicians aren’t using the drug combination until larger clinical trials are completed.

Delivery of these new alternatives will depend largely on doctors because drug companies are reluctant to market abortion-inducing drugs amid fears of product liability and political controversy. Methotrexate, for example, is available from various drug companies, including American Home Products Corp.’s Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories unit, which also markets birth-control pills. But American Home isn’t going to market the drug for abortions.

An American Home spokeswoman says, "We do not market, promote or research methods for use in early termination of pregnancy," and the company doesn’t plan to do so. As for using birth-control pills as a morning-after remedy, she adds: "We do not now and have no plans to market any birth-control pill formula for postcoital use in the U.S. The risk of litigation is our primary concern."

Nevertheless, doctors are free to begin using the cancer drug and regular birth-control pills for abortions. That is because the FDA regulates only what drugs are allowed on the market and what companies can say about them; doctors are legally allowed to use approved drugs for unapproved purposes.

Dr. Hausknecht of Mount Sinai says a group of doctors eventually plan to submit an application for FDA approval of the use of methotrexate for abortion purposes. Usually, the FDA advisory panel takes requests for new uses from drug companies.

The Population Council, a nonprofit research group in New York, received American patent rights for RU-486 from Roussel Uclaf SA, the French unit of Hoechst AG of Germany that developed RU-486 and markets it in Europe. The group has spent $12 million on clinical trials for the new drug application. It has tapped a new nonprofit organization in Washington, Advances in Health Technology Inc., to coordinate distribution and manufacturing. The group will sell the drug directly to doctors and health organizations and also train them to use it.

Neither group will name the third-party manufacturer that will produce the drug, out of fear that it could face a boycott or violent protests. But both say the company has the capacity to produce an "ample" supply. The panel on Friday recommended that patients receive misoprostol in addition to RU-486; studies show that the two-step process is more effective than taking RU-486 alone.

The new choices could put doctors back in the abortion business after a steady decline. Amid rancorous and sometimes violent protests of antiabortion groups, the number of doctors willing to perform the procedure had dropped to fewer than 2,400 by 1992, down almost 20% from a decade before, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that favors abortion rights. Federal officials say that 1.3 million abortions were performed in 1993, down from a high of 1.4 million in 1990; abortions are believed to have continued declining since then.

But a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-third of obstetricians who don’t perform abortions would prescribe mifepristone if it became available. "There is potential for considerable expansion," in the number of abortion providers, says James Trussell, who heads the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.

"American women are slowly getting more options," says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood in New York. "It’s about time."

Antiabortion groups counter, however, that all three methods could increase the frequency of an emotionally and physically painful procedure when other measures, such as prevention and adoption, should be pursued. And some critics charge that RU-486 can cause life-threatening bleeding.

Doctors who conducted clinical trials of RU-486 admit that excessive bleeding is a rare complication of the abortion pill, but say that happens in less than 1 in 500 cases. They also note that hundreds of thousands of woman have taken it in France, England and Sweden for years with few major problems.

As the White House leads a campaign to lower underage smoking rates by placing sweeping restrictions on cigarette advertising, giddy anti-smoking activists hope to stub out the tobacco industry’s on-line efforts before they can take root. But tobacco companies have started to claim their little acre of the Internet.

Nearly 37 percent of on-line Americans are under the age of 18, according to a study commissioned by HotWired, the on-line version of Wired magazine. That’s the same age group that President Clinton said on Aug. 10 he wants to keep the tobacco industry from reaching.

While his proposals would ban everything from color magazine advertisements to logos on product giveaways, on-line ads have been overlooked.

Four federal agencies say they are investigating the issue. But none is sure which agency has jurisdiction over on-line tobacco ads - or if any of them do. Rules and regulations written for a different time have not translated well to the Information Age. More importantly, the global nature of the Internet may render Washington’s regulatory actions worthless.

Although the tobacco companies insist they have no plans to advertise on the Internet, both Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds Tobacco, the nation’s two largest tobacco companies, have taken steps toward establishing an on-line presence. And computer records indicate that Philip Morris may be preparing an on-line site built around its Parliament cigarette brand.

"We’re concerned. So many kids are out there. And the federal agencies don’t seem to know how to regulate it," said Makani Themba, associate director of the Marin Institute, which monitors marketing by alcohol and tobacco industries. "They say they are committed to preventing youth access. They should not want to be on-line if there are so many kids on-line."

Philip Morris and RJR have staked claims to Internet addresses. The addresses, which are known as domain names, help the computers that make up the Internet guide electronic mail messages to the proper recipients and help World Wide Web surfers find the home pages they’re seeking.

Those addresses are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis by InterNIC, a Herndon, Va., non-profit agency.

Philip Morris has received five distinct domain names so far and RJR has received three, InterNIC records indicate. Both companies say the addresses were registered as a pre-emptive measure, to prevent critics or competitors from using the names, and not for on-line advertising.

"We haven’t even been discussing the idea of Internet advertising," RJR spokeswoman Peggy Carter said.

"What we have done is registered trademarks and other names not for offensive reasons but defensive ones," Philip Morris spokeswoman Karen Daragan said. "We have no current plans to use it for brand communications."

But unlike RJR, whose three names are variations on the letters RJR, Philip Morris has taken defensive measures one step further.

Four of its names are abbreviations and variations of Philip Morris. But the fifth address is parliament.com, a reference to its Parliament brand of cigarettes.

The first four are connected to the Internet through computers at UUNet Technologies Inc., a national Internet access provider, according to records filed with InterNIC by Philip Morris.

But the parliament.com address is connected through computers at Leo Burnett, Philip Morris’ longtime ad agency.

That leads industry watchers to suspect that Philip Morris plans to launch an on-line site around the Parliament brand.

"We know they’ve reserved space," Themba said. "I think they’re waiting to see if politically they can step out. We hope they don’t."

Daragan said that Philip Morris set up the records that way "because, to register for a name, you need a web site. Leo Burnett has one and we don’t."

But although there are many requirements to register domain names, having a web site is not one of them, according to InterNIC rules.

A possible Parliament site is in keeping with Philip Morris’ apparent corporate strategy for Internet use. The company’s Kraft Foods subsidiary recently reserved 133 domain names, including grapenuts.com and velveeta.com.

Parliament was Philip Morris’ seventh best-selling brand in the United States last year, with sales of 3.21 billion cigarettes, up from 2.99 billion in 1993.

An on-line Parliament site could feature special promotions and giveaways for Internet users, as well as traditional advertisements. Many companies have used Internet giveaways to collect demographic data on its customers.

An on-line site could be particularly valuable because of the Internet’s global reach. Both cigarette sales and Internet use are booming internationally.

The tobacco companies have long conceded the Internet to anti-smoking groups, which have turned it into a powerful lobbying and rallying tool. In fact, Philip Morris admits that it registered only the Parliament brand because site names using its other brands had already been picked off.

"The antis and others have taken the other brand names," Daragan said.

Also, all sorts of anti-smoking studies and documents are on-line, including more than 4,000 pages of leaked internal Brown & Williamson papers on nicotine research. More than 65,000 computer users have read the papers since a California court allowed the documents to go on-line July 1.

The tobacco companies admit they are considering using the Internet to try to rally their supporters. An on-line site could be used to post information and research, coordinate smokers’ rights groups and communicate with those interested in the industry.

But the companies may not be allowed to create an on-line presence.

The Clinton administration’s proposals, which could take effect as early as November if the tobacco industry fails in its efforts to block the regulations in court, could be construed to apply to on-line advertisements, industry watchers say.

"I imagine if there were on-line areas that have substantial underage use, they might be affected," said Kathy Mulvey, research director for INFACT, a corporate accountability activist group in Boston.

"So far, it’s been a low-tech debate," Tobacco Institute spokesman Tom Lauria said. "But I can’t imagine [Food and Drug Administration Commissioner] David Kessler overlooking any form of censorship."

But even the agencies that are supposed to be implementing the new regulations as well as existing ones are not sure whether they will apply to the Internet or whether they even have the authority to set them up that way.

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission referred calls about on-line advertising to the U.S. Department of Justice, which referred calls to the Federal Communications Commission, which referred questions back to Justice. At the White House, calls on the issue were directed to the Food and Drug Administration, where officials did not have an answer either. They referred calls back to the FTC.

While such exchanges are comical, they illustrate the real dilemma federal officials face in trying to enforce rules meant for television and print media in an on-line world.

While many sites like Netscape Communications Corp. already refuse on-line tobacco ads, and programs that allow parents to block certain material are available, some suggest that new legislation may be needed to prevent on-line tobacco ads from reaching minors.

But even an act of Congress would not be enough to thwart a tobacco company intent on advertising on-line.

The Internet is not really a network in the traditional sense, but a network of smaller networks. More than half of those networks are located outside the United States.

Because the physical locations of computers that direct information are inconsequential - borders are meaningless on the Internet - a site set up in another country can be available anywhere in the United States. For instance, a number of sites focused on gambling have been created overseas to circumvent government restrictions here, leading others to suggest that tobacco companies could do the same.

Or at least that’s what Dennis Buettner is hoping.

Buettner, a self-described "idea man" who lives in Severna Park, Md., and works as a network controller for NASA, reserved the addresses cigarette.com and cigarettes.com. He has written letters to every cigarette manufacturer offering to either rent the names to them or handle the on-line marketing himself.

"With the restrictions on tobacco advertising, people are going to be looking for different ways to market their products," Buettner said. "I figure if you have a good domain name, then people who want cigarettes will type it in.

"I read the articles about how they are planning to restrict tobacco advertising and thought, ‘How un-American.’ I don’t know much about the ads. But my thought is, what about freedom?"

Medical insiders say the problem has existed for years, but the doctors’ admission at the American Medical Association convention in Chicago is still hard to believe.

Reminding doctors to wash their hands should be like reminding lawyers to bill their clients. A no-brainer. If they can’t master basic hand washing, then they probably didn’t get much else out of medical school.

After all, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Mayo Clinic call hand washing the single most important way to stop infectious diseases from spreading.

But the "Ten Dirty Digits" resolution the AMA adopted June 22 says doctors simply aren’t washing their hands between patients. There’s only a 14 to 59 percent hand washing rate among doctors and a 25 to 45 percent rate among nurses. The resolution suggests the problem is so serious that cameras should be installed in hospital wards to check.

Doctors are not just derelict in their hand washing at hospitals. During a 1993 convention of the Infectious Diseases Society of America - doctors and other specialists who study germs and the transmission of disease - medical students staked out restrooms to see whether those who knew all the reasons to wash their hands actually did. Of the 493 experts they counted, only 56 percent of men, and 87 percent of women, washed up before walking out.

"This isn’t a new problem," said Theresa Klimko, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the state Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources. "These kinds of studies have been going on for several years."

One hundred forty eight years, to be exact. In 1847, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss reported that doctors who washed their hands spread fewer germs. His colleagues responded by declaring Semmelweiss insane and committing him to an asylum for the remainder of his life.

The current hand-wringing over hand-washing comes on the heels of a 1994 study suggesting that as many as 1 in 20 hospital patients is infected by doctors or nurses who fail to wash their hands.

Doctors also say that rubber gloves are no substitute for a good scrub.

"As gloves are used, especially around teeth and body cavities, it’s hard on the thin latex, and tiny holes can develop," said Dr. James Crawford, a microbiologist and infection control coordinator for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry.

Before gloves, dentists had to wash up to 60 times a day, he said. And those weren’t flick-on-the-faucet-and-twirl-your-hands-around-for-a-few-seconds washes. Those were 60 thorough washes.

"A thorough wash, if you lather and rinse twice, takes about 15 seconds to accomplish what you’re going to accomplish," Crawford explained. "To do anything more, you would need to wash for 30 seconds to a minute."

At 15 seconds per wash, that works out to 65 hours of hand washing per year.

Doctors aren’t the only ones who aren’t scrubbing up when they should.

As the head of the state Department of Environmental Health’s Food, Lodging and Institutional Sanitation branch, Susan Grayson makes her living making sure that food professionals, day care workers and others required by law to wash their hands actually do.

"I’m one of those strange people who goes into ladies rooms to watch if people wash their hands," she said. "From personal observation, I can tell you only 50 percent of women wash their hands."

While many of the people required by law to wash their hands fall under Grayson’s jurisdiction, others are forced to wash by higher authorities.

In Judaism, for instance, observant Jews must ritually wash their hands upon waking up, leaving a bathroom, before praying, before eating meals and sometimes even before preparing them, says Rabbi Pinchas Herman of Raleigh’s Congregation Sha’Arei Israel-Lubavitch. "Our custom is to pour water three times on the left hand and three times on the right hand," Herman explained. "Some do it twice, some do it once. There are different customs."

So how frequently does the rabbi wash his hands?

"Well, it depends on how often I go to the bathroom," Herman said, laughing. He says he probably washes 10 times a day.

And, he says, because ritual hand washing is done for spiritual and not hygienic reasons, hands must be clean before they’re washed. Which means washing twice.

Then there are the people who have to wash their hands not because of any law but because they simply can’t stop.

People suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder often have an abnormal fear of contamination that leads to constant hand washing, says clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Lefebvre, who sees two to three patients per week for compulsive hand washing.

"It’s common that people are afraid of contamination not because it would hurt them but because they might inadvertently hurt someone else," he said. "They hit upon hand washing as a way of alleviating that anxiety of contamination. A vicious cycle is set up."

The disorder can be treated with medications such as Prozac and behavior modification therapy. Treatment usually takes 10 sessions, Lefebvre said.

Unfortunately, the treatment might not work in reverse. Which means those who suffer from lapses in their hand washing hygiene will just have to remember to wash on their own. Or maybe they could take the AMA’s advice and do what the doctors ordered.

Then we could all wash our hands of this matter.

Hands act as carriers for germs, which flourish thanks to their warmth, moisture and oils. While you generally can’t get sick simply from having germs on your hands, you can whenever you touch those hands to your mouth, eyes or nose.

"Hate your boss?" asks Susan Grayson, head of the state Department of Environmental Health’s Food, Lodging and Institutional Sanitation branch. "Get a bad cold, cough in your hand and shake his. You can pass lots of germs along like that."

Experts recommend that you wash your hands for at least 20 to 30 seconds whenever you come into contact with something that could have been contaminated by germs, human or animal feces, urine and hazardous materials.

"The most important thing is to do a thorough job," Grayson says. "Be sure to get in between the fingers, around the cuticles and under your nails. And don’t forget your wrists."

You should wash your hands whenever you do the following:

Prepare food.

Clean bathrooms or mop the floor.

Feed your pets or clean their cages.

Blow your nose.

Change a diaper.

Touch lead paint.

Use a public restroom (Remember that faucet handles in the restrooms can get germs on them, too. And if others don’t wash their hands, everything from doorknobs to bowls of mints may be contaminated.).

I heard a helicopter landing, and they rushed me to it. It’s hard not to be scared when you’re being “medevacked” to a hospital with another child next to you screaming and a paramedic telling you not to move. As soon as the helicopter landed, they rushed me to the emergency room. Dad was in Ohio on a business trip, but my mom got there after about a half hour. Having her with me really helped.

The pain was terrible. I was beyond crying. It’s funny, all I wanted to do was sleep. But they wouldn’t let me. They kept asking me how to spell my name, and I was shouting, “S-T-E-W-A-R-T. Got it?” They did that to make sure that I wasn’t going into shock. I kept asking when I could sleep. I was either hot or cold. They put heat lamps on me and I was too hot, and they took them off and I was freezing. It was horrible.

Next, they moved me to the ICU-the intensive care unit designed especially for burn patients. There was a high risk of infection, so they started the process of skin grafts as soon as possible. It was clear that my hands had been so badly burned that skin grafts would be necessary. The surgery on my hands took place three days after the accident. My hands had to be elevated all the time after the surgery, so I had to learn to sleep on my back. Later I had two additional operations for skin grafting on my forehead, neck and arms.

The day-to-day pain was terrible. It was so bad I couldn’t think about anything else. I didn’t realize how serious my situation was; that is, how close I was to being disabled in a major way. I couldn’t have dealt with the pain without the support of my parents. If they hadn’t been there behind me, I would have given up at the first turn, the first struggle. My parents forced me to keep going. My mom stayed with me during the days, and my dad spent the nights. They didn’t let him sleep in the room at first, so for a week and a half my dad slept out in the lobby on the most uncomfortable plastic chair you can imagine-just to be near me.

I was in the hospital for 38 days. In five weeks, I had to go through three operations for the needed skin grafts. In addition, I had to wear splints on my hands and arms to keep my skin from contracting as it healed. I had a ton of bandages, which had to be changed three times a day. Some of them would stick, which was really painful.

Getting mail meant a lot to me while I was in the hospital. I got a letter from the Redskins that really cheered me up. It said: “We know of your strength and fortitude and we hope you’ll keep your spirits up . . . Ask any pro player and he’ll say that the worst thing is to get down. You must fight for yourself, give 110 percent, and things turn out for the best. Give it your best shot and feel good about that. We’re all rooting for you.” They sent me a football too.

Meanwhile, I kept imagining the accident happening over and over again. It was so horrible, it was bottled up in me. I was always fearful that something would happen while I was sleeping, that the hospital would blow up or something like that.

The social workers in the hospital were nice, but I didn’t like the psychiatrists at all. One day I woke up, and there was this man standing over me. He introduced himself and told me that he was a psychiatrist. He wasn’t exactly my favorite person because he would pop in at times when I wanted to be left alone, and he refused to leave unless I talked to him. It was intimidating because I felt I had no control over things. Finally I told my mom that I wanted to describe what had happened, and I wanted her to take notes of what I said. Telling my mom everything that happened made me feel better than telling the psychiatrist. I also wrote poems about my accident so that I’ll have something to look back on in future years.

Since burns take a very long time to heal, I had to go through a lot for the rest of the year. After I got out of the hospital, it took weeks for me to get my strength back, even to get dressed by myself. When I finally got back to school, I wasn’t allowed to go out to recess because getting too much sun might affect the coloring of my skin grafts and because people were afraid I’d get hurt.

My parents had to play the role of the bad guy with me a lot during this time, which was very hard on them. They saw a psychiatrist who told them not to smother me with attention or spoil me. If I didn’t want to take a bath, which I usually didn’t want to do, my dad would just pick me up and put me in the tub anyway. I’d be begging him to stop and I’d cry, but he wouldn’t give in. Sometimes my parents would cry, but they both knew that there was only one chance to get my skin to heal with the best results, and they were determined that everything possible would be done.

Having all this happening at home was very hard on my 6-year-old brother. My parents tried to give him a lot of attention, but that was hard because of all my medical care and physical therapy. It wasn’t until after I began to recover that we were treated pretty equally.

My face and arms had to be covered with a special pressure garmen that looked like a tight stocking. It was designed to maximize healing, minimize scarring and reduce the sunlight reaching my skin, because any sunburn would be very painful and would affect the permanent coloration of my skin grafts. The face mask fit tightly like a ski mask. I had to wear it all day except for eating and bathing. It hurt when I took it off and put it back on because my hair would get stuck in the Velcro fastener down the back. Sometimes my forehead would bleed on the edge of my skin graft, and the skin and the mask would stick together, making it really hurt to take the mask off.

When I found out that I was supposed to wear that mask for an entire year, I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like forever. At first I refused to wear it, and my father had to force me to put it on. We had some pretty big fights about this. He got a couple of punches in the stomach. My parents kept telling me that in a few years, I would appreciate having worn the mask. Looking back now, I see they were right-the time went quicker than I thought it would, and I know it made the scars heal better.

Still, it was a hard time for me. A lot of people made flip remarks about the mask. Adults that I’d never met felt that they could jeer at a little twerp. They’d say, “Oh, Halloween’s come late this year” or, “Are you from the latest monster movie?” Little kids were scared of me. They would run away when I came into a room. It got so bad that I was afraidto go to the bank with my mother. I thought that people would be suspicious of somebody even my size wearing a mask.

I think the accident has made me a bit more independent than somebody my age would normally be. Even though my parents backed me up, it’s a fight I had to make on my own. Their support helped me, but it didn’t win the emotional battle for me. I had to do that for myself.

The biggest thing I’ve had to deal with is my fear of fire. At first, I couldn’t even stay at birthday parties when the cake came. Then I realized it wasn’t doing me any good to run away, and I forced myself to sit there while they blew out the candles. Recently, I went to dinner at Benihana’s. I had to prepare myself for it because the flaming oil used for cooking on the grill made me afraid that if there was a fire, my family and I wouldn’t be able to escape. When we were done, I saw that I could control my fears to some extent. I even had to work at watching movies with fires in them. When I was in the hospital, there was a movie on TV that ended with a bombing and fiery plane crash. It gave me nightmares for a week, but in the end it helped me fight my fears.

In some ways this experience has shattered my innocence. I lost any hope of believing in religion. I ask myself, “If there’s a God, why would He do this to a 9-year-old?” If there’s a mighty and powerful Creator who controls the world, He wouldn’t let things like this happen. Sometimes I get angry that this happened to me, and sometimes I get sad. Other times I don’t mind it at all.

My life is a fight-against my fears and for my future. It’s not easy right now, but the worst will all be over in a year or two. I’m pretty sure that I’ll never walk into a singles bar and have somebody say, “Ooh, you’re so handsome.” But in the course of the next few years, I’ll probably have a few more operations to smooth out some of the scars.

For all I know, the scars will be an eternity. But I feel that if I know somebody really well and they know me, my scars shouldn’t be a barrier.

The blast occurred in a science laboratory at Murch Elementary School, on 36th and between Ellicott and Davenport streets NW, where 14 students enrolled in a summer enrichment program for gifted youngsters were making fireworks commonly known as “sparklers,” D.C. police officials said.

D.C. school spokeswoman Janis Cromer later called the experiment “inappropriate” and said the materials used, which are similar to those used in gunpowder, were “not supposed to be in the schools whatsoever.”

The program at Murch, called “Summer Discovery,” is paid for by parents at $165 per pupil and is supervised and taught by educators hired by the program. School system personnel and funds are not involved. Cromer said that when school administrators reviewed plans for the program several weeks ago, there was “no mention of the sparklers experiment.”

Two 9-year-old boys injured by the explosion were taken by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where they were admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition.

One boy suffered second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body, with his face, arms and hands badly burned, according to a hospital spokeswoman. The other was said to have suffered burns over a slighty smaller portion of his body.

The two 9-year-olds were identified as Dedrick Howell, a student at Eaton Elementary School, and Stewart Ugelow, who attends Murch, school officials confirmed. It was unclear which boy had the more serious injuries.

In addition, two 8-year-olds, a girl and a boy, were taken by ambulance to Children’s, where they were listed in good condition last night. The girl, identified as Puja Malholtra, was slightly burned, while the boy, identified as Jonathan Foer, suffered shock as a result of the violent blast but was not burned. The two, both of whom attend Murch, were being held for observation last night, officials said.

The students had been instructed to mix the combustible substances — potassium perchlorate, sulfur, charcoal, iron powder and aluminum powder — in large bowls and grind them as fine as sugar, according to Charles Butta, director of the two-week program.

Later in the week, they were to use an adhesive to apply the powdery mixture to wires from coat hangers to make sparklers similar to those used during Independence Day celebrations.

Moments before the explosion, one of the students apparently disobeyed instructions and started jamming a wire into his bowl of substances. The impact of the wire apparently created a spark that ignited the powders, said Butta, who described the accident as “horrible” and “traumatic.”

Michael Nickens, 10, who was participating in the experiment but was not injured, described it as a fun exercise that went horribly awry. “We were making sparklers,” he said. “Everybody was following instructions, but one boy got frustrated and started shaking the bowl and hitting it with a little masher. He said, ‘Oh, this is neat.’ All the other kids said, ‘Stop. Don’t do that.’ And then it exploded.

“I just ran out of that classroom. I ran as fast as I could.”

Cromer said, “That type of experiment is not one that we would use in our curriculum. The only three chemicals allowed in D.C. schools for experiments are vinegar, baking soda and alum. In the view of the D.C. schools, this would not be an experiment that would be appropriate.”

A Summer Discovery brochure says the program is supposed to involve courses in earth science, mathematics, critical thinking skills, computers, aerobics, biology and astronomy. School officials said chemistry replaced the scheduled astronomy class because an astronomy instructor was not available.

Butta said chemistry teacher Lou Jagoe and a second teacher were in the lab at the time, but neither was watching the student who allegedly caused the explosion.

The blast knocked one student to the floor and sent others running down the hallways, witnesses said.

“The explosion sounded like a cannon had fired . . . . There was a big boom,” said one teacher who asked not to be identified. Two persons who were on the playground said they heard the blast and saw yellow smoke billowing from the windows of the science lab.

The blast left the top of one table singed; sheets of newspaper that had covered it were turned to ashes. The sour smell of smoke filled the lab. There was no other apparent damage to the building.

Yesterday was the first day of what was expected to be a three-part chemistry experiment, said Butta, whom school system officials said is a University of Maryland professor. Butta founded the enrichment program at American University several years ago for elementary school students and introduced it to the city school system this summer.

School board member Wanda Washburn (Ward 3) said she was “concerned” about the accident, but described the program as “innovative and challenging.” The program has 30 students.