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Each year we welcome May's promise of warm breezes and sunlit days. But May also is Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month, as one in five Americans with asthma knows: They dread the anxiety and sleepless nights marked by a frightening struggle to breathe. Allergies mean runny noses, sneezing, itching and watery eyes triggered by pollen, dust, animal fur and pests such as cockroaches. Allergic asthma also can be triggered by heavy exercise or abrupt weather changes. Doctors can treat it by prescribing drugs to control symptoms and permit breathing.
Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood, but severe asthma strikes adults, too: It killed Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in 1987. African Americans suffer from asthma more frequently and more severely than whites; partly because 50 percent live in environments with unhealthful air quality and in poorly ventilated, crowded housing, compared with 33 percent of whites.
The racial disparities in asthma are fed by the substandard care African American children seem to be receiving. African American children more often are treated in emergency departments; and this erratic, episodic care does
not promote effective preventive education and disease management necessary with asthma care.
Environmental poisons such as benzene and methylene chloride as well as lead, mercury and other heavy metals sicken even people without asthma. Air quality is another important issue. Many experts believe that carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and toxic exhaust particles in the air exacerbate asthma and the other lung ailments that strike African Americans hardest. |
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