Asthma is a disease that affects millions of people in the U.S. Although scientists are not sure what causes it, they do know that many of the things that can trigger an attack are found in the environment around us. Those with asthma can control their household environment enough to reduce attacks, or at least their severity. But it’s hard to do the same outside. However, a study is underway to look at how a neighborhood’s environment affects asthma. It might one day lead to neighborhood groups taking action to reduce the kinds of airborne things that trigger asthma attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the second report in our series on asthma:
Transcript
Asthma is a disease that affects millions of people in the U.S. Although scientists are not
sure what causes it, they do know that many of the things that can trigger an attack are
found in the environment around us. Those with asthma can control their household
environment enough to reduce attacks, or at least their severity. But it’s hard to do the
same outside. However, a study is underway to look at how a neighborhood’s
environment affects asthma. It might one day lead to neighborhood groups taking action
to reduce the kinds of air-borne things that trigger asthma attacks. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham has the second report in our series on asthma:
It’s unclear why, but African American children in poverty-
stricken urban areas tend to be especially vulnerable to
asthma. Jennifer Pickett is the asthma program manager with
The American Lung Association of Michigan.
She says the rate of asthma among white children in rural
areas is also a problem, but in urban areas such as Detroit,
there seem to be more things to aggravate the disease.
“Specifically in an urban area, you have the higher concentration
of pollution, more ozone in the atmosphere. And that’s very dangerous as we
know. It’s an irritant to the respiratory tract. Again, everything that
becomes airborne in a city can affect the asthmatic.”
Since school-age children spend a good part of their day at
the school, when researchers decided to test the air in city
neighborhoods, it seemed to make sense to put air quality
monitors on top of elementary schools. Tim Dvonch
is a researcher at the University of Michigan. He’s working on a
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and
Environmental Protection Agency study of asthma in urban
areas. He says the air monitors will test for dust, ozone, and
soot, or what the researchers call particulate matter,
which might be a key to the increase in asthma. Dvonch says
regulations have made smokestack emissions cleaner but
asthma rates continue to increase. Dvonch says it’s possible
what’s left in the emissions might be more dangerous.
“The larger particles are being removed from smokestacks and not
being emitted into the atmosphere. This is resulting in a lower mass
concentration, but what’s actually leaving is a higher percentage of fine
particles. And the fine particles are the ones we’re concerned about in
terms of respiratory disease. Those are the ones that actually penetrate all
the way down into the human lung and can cause respiratory effects.”
The particulate matter comes from diesel trucks, cars, and
coal-fired power plants as well as some manufacturing
smokestacks. Dvonch says the study will monitor the air at
two elementary schools year round. The study also
monitors the air in the children’s homes. And for a couple of
weeks at a time, the kids keep back packs with them day and
night, sampling the air around them. Dvonch says the
researchers will then start cross-referencing
that data with a diary of asthma attacks the kids and their
parents keep.
“So, basically what we’re doing is we want to get a true measure of
their exposure with this personal sampling device. And to help us figure out
where in the day they’re being exposed, we’re making measurements outdoors
in their community as well as indoors inside their home to try to get an
assessment of where the majority or the different percentages of the
exposures are actually coming from in the course of their typical day.”
Researchers know that targeting the causes and sources of
asthma attacks is important not only because the health of
the children is at risk, but also because the costs to the
community are high and long-lasting.
“Apparently it’s the largest reason for absenteeism in the schools.”
Katherine Edgren is another University of Michigan
researcher. She also heads up a Detroit area program called
Community Action Against Asthma.
“So, it has a lot of really serious effects. I mean, kids are
missing school, so they aren’t benefiting from what they might be learning
in school. A lot of people are using emergency rooms to address, you know,
serious symptoms. There have been deaths from asthma, which is in this day
and age there are ways to treat asthma and it’s really a terrible shame to
see children dying from asthma.”
Across the country, the number of days of school missed
because of asthma has been rising during the last several
years. Asthma attacks in school have become such a problem
that a bill was recently introduced in the Michigan
legislature that would allow school children to carry their
inhalers with them. Medications are usually kept with the
school nurse or teacher.
That kind of legislation might be a good first step, but
government officials are beginning to realize they cannot
simply work on helping kids deal with the results of the
disease. There’s growing pressure on government
to further restrict the pollutants and other man-made things
that aggravate asthma.
So if the air quality study finds manufacturing plants in the
neighborhoods are causing the problems, local agencies and
organizations involved in the study’s program could then
approach the factories and ask for changes. If
that doesn’t work, they’re prepared to go to government
regulators or the courts for a remedy.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.