Air pollution can cause asthma and make it worse!
From the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America, World Wide Web, April 2021
Asthma causes swelling of the airways. This results in narrowing of the airways that carry air from the nose and mouth to the lungs. Allergens or irritating things entering the lungs trigger asthma symptoms. Symptoms include trouble breathing, wheezing, coughing and tightness in the chest. Asthma can be deadly.
There is no cure for asthma, but it can be managed with proper prevention of asthma attacks and treatment. More Americans than ever before have asthma. It is one of this country’s most common and costly diseases.
How Common Is Asthma? — Approximately 25 million Americans have asthma. This equals to about 1 in 13 Americans, including 8 percent of adults and 7 percent of children. About 20 million U.S. adults age 18 and over have asthma. Asthma is more common in adult women than adult men.
Asthma is the leading chronic disease in children. Currently, there are about 5.1 million children under the age of 18 with asthma. Asthma is more common in boys than girls.
What Are the Rates of Asthma Episodes in Children? — In 2019, 44.3 percent of children age 18 and younger who had asthma reported having one or more asthma attacks in the past year. About 47.2 percent of children under the age of 5 with asthma had an episode. According to the CDC, asthma episodes in children have declined from 2001 through 2016.
How Many People Get Sick from Asthma? — In 2016, asthma accounted for for 9.8 million doctor’s office visits. In 2018, asthma accounted for 178,530 discharges from hospital inpatient care and 1.6 million emergency department visits.
How Many People Die from Asthma? — On average, ten Americans die from asthma each day. In 2019, 3,524 people died from asthma. Many of these deaths are avoidable with proper treatment and care. Adults are five times more likely to die from asthma than children. Women are more likely to die from asthma than men, and boys are more likely than girls.
What Are the Costs of Asthma? — From 2008-2013, the annual economic cost of asthma was more than $81.9 billion – including medical costs and loss of work and school days: $3 billion in losses due to missed work and school days, $29 billion due to asthma-related mortality, and $50.3 billion in medical costs.
The annual per-person incremental medical cost of asthma was $3,266 (in 2015 U.S. dollars). Among children ages 5 to 17, asthma is one of the top causes of missed school days. In 2013, it accounted for more than 13.8 million missed school days.
Do Men or Women Have Higher Rates of Asthma? — Women are more likely to have asthma than men. 9.8 percent of women have asthma, compared to 6.1 percent of men. Women are more likely to die from asthma than men. Boys are more likely to have asthma than girls. 8.4 percent of boys have asthma, compared to 5.5 percent of girls.
Medical Review February 2018, updated April 2021 For more information visit aafa.org
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https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/59/6/424/1435138
Diesel exhaust causing low-dose irritant asthma with latency?
Femi Adewole, Vicky C. Moore, Alastair S. Robertson, & P. S. Burge, Occupational Medicine, Volume 59, Issue 6, September 2009, Pages 424–427
Background — Diesel exhaust exposure may cause acute irritant-induced asthma and potentiate allergen-induced asthma. There are no previous reports of occupational asthma due to diesel exhaust.
Aims — To describe occupational asthma with latency in workers exposed to diesel exhaust in bus garages.
Methods — The Shield database of occupational asthma notifications in the West Midlands, UK, was searched between 1990 and 2006 for workers where diesel exhaust exposure was thought to be the cause of the occupational asthma. Those without other confounding exposures whose occupational asthma was validated by serial peak expiratory flow (PEF) analysis using Oasys software were included.
Results — Fifteen workers were identified with occupational asthma attributed to diesel exhaust. Three had validated new-onset asthma with latency. All worked in bus garages where diesel exhaust exposure was the only likely cause of their occupational asthma. Occupational asthma was confirmed by measures of non-specific reactivity and serial measurements of PEF with Oasys scores of 2.9, 3.73 and 4 (positive score > 2.5).
Conclusions — The known non-specific irritant effects of diesel exhaust suggest that this is an example of low-dose irritant-induced asthma and that exposures to diesel exhaust in at least some bus garages are at a sufficient level to cause this.
Gas well fumes are making daycare workers sick in Arlington, TX
SOURCE ~ Spectrum Local News, December 23, 2021
Comments by Sandra Steingraber, Facebook, 12/23/21
“In Arlington [Texas], drilling is supposed to occur no closer than 600 feet from day care centers or homes. But companies can apply for a waiver from the City Council to drill as close as 300 feet.
“Arlington’s air quality exceeds federal ozone pollution standards set by the EPA. In 2012, at the height of the fracking boom, asthma rates for school-age children in Tarrant County were 19%-25% — far above national and state norms.
“The gas wells next to Mother’s Heart represent just a tiny fraction of Total’s global operations. Yet the company holds tight to its plans to drill there despite the community’s resistance.”
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/dallas-fort-worth/public-safety/2021/12/22/gas-well-fumes-are-making-daycare-workers-sick-in-arlington
COMMON RESPIRATORY VIRUS ….. NOT COVID — 19
Respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-uhl) virus, or RSV, is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. Most people recover in a week or two, but RSV can be serious, especially for infants and older adults.
RSV is the most common cause of bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways in the lung) and pneumonia (infection of the lungs) in children younger than 1 year of age in the United States.
People at High Risk for Severe RSV Infection ~
Most people who get an RSV infection will have mild illness and will recover in a week or two. Some people, however, are more likely to develop severe RSV infection and may need to be hospitalized.
Examples of severe infections include bronchiolitis (an inflammation of the small airways in the lung) and pneumonia. RSV can also make chronic health problems worse. For example, people with asthma may experience asthma attacks as a result of RSV infection, and people with congestive heart failure may experience more severe symptoms triggered by RSV.
The following groups of people are more likely to get serious complications if they get sick with RSV: (1) Infants, (2) Young children, (3) Older adults, (4) Asthmatics, (5) Combined with air pollution.
One in 12 new cases of asthma in children linked to NO2 air pollution
By Adam Vaughan, New Scientist, January 5, 2022
About one in 12 new child asthma cases worldwide are associated with exposure to a toxic gas released by diesel vehicles, according to a new estimate.
Breathing high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) has been previously linked with triggering and exacerbating asthma in childhood. The evidence is now considered strong enough that in 2020, a UK coroner ruled that exposure to the pollutant contributed to the death of 9-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah.
Susan Anenberg at George Washington University in Washington DC and her colleagues estimate that 1.85 million new childhood asthma cases were linked with the gas in 2019, making up 8.5 per cent of all new cases that year. That is down from 13 per cent four years earlier, mainly due to richer countries cleaning up their air through emissions standards for vehicles and industry.
“I think this is a good news story for NO2. The fraction of new paediatric asthma cases that are attributable to NO2 has dropped,” says Anenberg.
However, the researchers show how unevenly the burden today falls on cities and poorer countries. About two-thirds of the linked asthma cases are in urban areas. And while high-income nations saw NO2-associated cases fall by 41 per cent – driven largely by North America – south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa saw them rise.
The researchers used satellite and land use data to map annual average NO2 levels in one kilometre-wide squares globally, before taking data on total childhood asthma cases to estimate how many were associated with NO2, based on 20 epidemiological studies.
“It is important to note that the actual pollutants in the traffic emission mix that cause asthma remain elusive, and these results do not suggest that we should focus on only emissions of NO2 alone,” says Jonathan Grigg at Queen Mary University of London.
There are some other potential caveats: data on the air pollutant is patchy in some parts of the world, particularly in Africa. And in some low and middle-income countries, the total figures on all child asthma cases may be an underestimate, which would also make the number linked to NO2 too low.
Nonetheless, Anenberg says the results stand and are a reminder that governments around the world need to translate tough new guidelines from the World Health Organization into legal standards. “The key takeaway for me is the vast majority of people on the face of the planet are breathing air pollution that is unsafe,” she says.
Journal reference: The Lancet Planetary Health, DOI: 10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00255-2
Source ~ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2303473-one-in-12-new-cases-of-asthma-in-children-linked-to-no2-air-pollution/