World Asthma Day !

Today is World Asthma Day – did you know that? It’s a day to make everyone aware of what asthma is. If you think it is just a little wheezing; if you think that asthma is just an inability to catch your breath when you are climbing a hill, or running to catch the bus – think again.

Asthma can affect people of all ages, although it usually starts when young.  It does run in families.   All sorts of things can aggravate the condition, pollen or allergies (which is why doctors are so busy right now in the spring!) and “bad air” – air that contains particulates or pollution that irritates airways in the lungs, which causes narrowing of the airways and make breathing harder and harder.

Asthma rates are increasing yearly. According to a report on MedicineNet.com

A study reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (1999; 159:125-29) evaluated a group of patients at two points in time, 30 years apart. The study performed by doctors in Scotland detected a significant increase in symptoms of allergic asthma and levels of antibodies to environmental allergic factors, such as dust mites, pets, and air pollutants over the three decades. Importantly, the researchers noted that there was an increase in the signs and symptoms of allergy, even in people without a family history of allergy!

Did you know that people die from the effects of asthma? According to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology (and I copied this, because I find it pretty stunning and didn’t want to make a mistake)

• Approximately 34.1 million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma by a health professional during their  lifetime.¹
• An estimated 300 million people worldwide suffer from asthma, with 250,000 annual deaths attributed to the disease.²
• Workplace conditions, such as exposure to fumes, gases or dust, are responsible for 11% of asthma cases worldwide.²
• About 70% of asthmatics also have allergies.²
• The prevalence of asthma increased 75% from 1980-1994.³
• Asthma rates in children under the age of five have increased more than 160% from 1980-1994.³
• It is estimated that the number of people with asthma will grow by more than 100 million by 2025.²
• Asthma accounts for approximately 500,000 hospitalizations each year.⁵
• 13 million school days are missed each year due to asthma.⁵
• Asthma accounts for about 10.1 million missed work days for adults annually.⁵
• Asthma was responsible for 3,384 deaths in the United States in 2005.⁶
• The annual economic cost of asthma is $19.7 billion. Direct costs make up $14.7 billion of that total, and indirect costs such as lost productivity add another $5 billion.¹
• Prescription drugs represented the largest single direct medical expenditure related to asthma, over $6 billion.¹
• In 2006, asthma prevalence was 20.1% higher in African Americans than in whites.¹
• The prevalence of asthma in adult females was 23% greater than the rate in males, in 2006.¹
• Approximately 40% of children who have asthmatic parents will develop asthma.⁴
• In 2005, 8.9% of children in the United States currently had asthma.⁸
• Nine million U.S. children under 18 have been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their lifetime.⁸
• Nearly 4 million children have had an asthma attack in the previous year.⁸
• More than 12 million people in the United States report having an asthma attack in the past year.⁷
• Asthma accounts for 217,000 emergency room visits and 10.5 million physician office visits every year.⁹
• In 2006, almost 2.5 million people over the age of 65 had asthma, and more than 1 million had an asthma attack or episode.¹
• In a survey of U.S. homes, approximately one-quarter had levels of dust mite allergens present in a bed at a level high enough to trigger asthma symptoms.¹⁰
• In 2007, 29% of children who had a food allergy also had asthma.¹¹
• Asthma increases the odds of healthcare use in obese people by 33%.¹²
• About 23 million people, including almost 7 million children, have asthma.¹³
• Approximately 2 million Hispanics in the U.S. have asthma. ¹⁴
• Asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children under 15.¹⁵
• An average of one out of every 10 school-aged child has asthma.¹⁶
• Annual expenditures for health and lost productivity due to asthma are estimated at over $20 billion, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute

This isn’t just a medical issue – it’s a budget issue. Another fact – one of the medical reasons to be turned down for military service – asthma!

From all the studies that have been done, one inescapable fact is – with a rise in air pollution, there has been a correlational rise in asthma rates.  The Clean Air Act has done a good job of cleaning up the air in major cities and can do more, if we make sure that it continues to be in effect!  Our air is worth it.  Our kids lungs are worth it.

See, this is why I’m a member of Mom’s Clean Air Force!

KSF

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Clean Air – Moms Clean Air Force

Clean air! It’s everyone’s right, to have air that is clean and that won’t hurt us to take a deep breath, right? That is the reason we have the EPA and The Clean Air Act. So why should I care about this – it’s the law already, we fought that battle back in the 70s, and in the 80s and even in the 90s. Why are you bothering me with this? We’ve become accustomed to having air we can breathe, safely.

Many years ago, when this Milspouse muttered in Minnesota, I worked for a group of lawyers who worked for the Pollution Control Agency. The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes published an advisory, stating that pregnant women, young children and even women who were thinking of becoming pregnant shouldn’t eat a lot of fish out of any of those lovely lakes. Placards at the lakes told us that all those people who fish should toss them back, not just because of conservation of the fish stock – but because the mercury levels were so high! Mercury? The mercury we used to see in thermometers? Now, you ask, what does this have to do with the Clean Air Act – I should be talking about the Clean WATER Act. No, not this time; this mercury isn’t naturally occurring.  Airborne particles from coal fired power plants are precipitating those mercury levels into the “danger for pregnant women” zone.

The EPA is proposing a ruling and update to the Clean Air Act targeting those toxic air pollutants that are the most harmful – like mercury, arsenic, dioxin, lead, acid gases and other heavy metals. These are usually spewed out by coal fired power plants that don’t have any limits on what they emit. Now this rule has been under consideration and development for 20 years. In that time some power plants have been fitted with the necessary filters, and are online, working efficiently but in a cleaner fashion than those unfiltered.

Opponents to these regulations are trying very hard to prevent the EPA from enforcing these new rules under consideration. BUT on the other hand, those who care about our health are on board with making these new rules the law, like The American Medical Association, the American Lung Association; the American Heart Association; the American Academy of Pediatricians; the American Nurses Association.

I’m part of a new movement – Moms Clean Air Force* – as a mom and grandma, I believe in clean air for our families. I’m combining two passions here, military families and their welfare, and environmental causes. The young children of this country, who are the population most likely to have asthma from “bad air”, who get the constant respiratory illnesses from bad air, and whose little bodies are most likely to be polluted by the dioxins, the mercury and lead that can harm their brain development; those children deserve clean air, deserve to be able to breathe safely. My granddaughter deserves to be able to run around in the clean air, not wheeze and sneeze from pollutants.

Our military children, when they live in this country, deserve to be able to breathe safely. After all, some of us have lived in countries where the air isn’t that clean, where we can’t be sure what they are breathing in. We’ve seen our spouses come back from “downrange” and other places, talking about being able to breathe so much better when they are back. Some of us are seeing the effects of bad air that our service-member breathed in affecting their breathing now. Let’s keep that clean air here in the USA, let’s make sure that the air we all breathe is as clean as we can possibly make it.

The EPA News Release is here

That link will lead you to other EPA links about this new rule. You can get the 900 page proposed rule as well as very helpful interpretation documents if you don’t want to devote your week to reading the whole thing!

Here is the place to add your comments – email address: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov

To make life easier on the person sorting these, and to make sure that your comment gets to the right place, emails should reference these Docket ID numbers.

Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2011-0044 (NSPS action)
Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0234 (NESHAP action)

*Disclosure: I am receiving a small honorarium for my time writing, speaking and participating in events as part of the Moms Clean Air Force. But you know I wouldn’t do this, if I didn’t believe in it. I believe, as I always have, in being a good caretaker of the planet while I’m here, and leaving it a better, cleaner place for my child and grandchild.

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