Air Pollution and Asthma May Up the Risk of Suicide
I know what you’re probably thinking after reading that header: “Well, yeah.” Because air pollution can make asthma worse, and the more severe symptoms are, the more likely the risk of suicide would get, right?
Actually, the research suggests air pollution increases the risk. Period.
And asthma may increase the risk (which we already knew). Period.
Separate studies; same article.
Check out the whole article, which includes this sentence: “The researchers suggest that a confluence of physical, psychological, and social challenges related to asthma may be to blame.”
More on that next week, but this next link is tangentially related:
Severe Asthmatics in Scotland Face “Shocking” Discrimination
Asthma UK and the Severe Asthma National Network report ignorance, misunderstanding, discrimination, and even a battle to get disability help all add to the serious health issues of severe asthmatics in Scotland. Anybody in that part of the world know more about this?
Remember How Olives and Fish and Other Mediterranean-Type Foods Maybe Prevent Asthma?
Yeah, they probably don’t.
Which Famous Author Do You Write Like?
Seen this yet? It’s all over Twitter right now. I plugged in four samples – for accuracy, dontcha know – and got H.P. Lovecraft once and David Foster Wallace three times. Interesting.
And Now a Little Housekeeping
If you start following me on Twitter, please let me know who you are unless it’s already obvious by your Twitter handle. Since I don’t follow auto-follow people, I don’t want to miss out on any regular readers or bloggers. Speaking of which, Twitter is actually a far faster way to get ahold of me than through my email, if you’re so inclined.
Regarding Scotland’s asthma disability discrimination, I think that’s less a matter of asthma in particular and more a problem of how we deal with episodic disabilities in general: In Canada, it’s only very recently that asthma has been recognized as a disability for the purposes of work allowances and travel. For travel, it’s literally within the past few months that it was recognized (with an order that states an airline is not allowed to have cats in the cabin, period, and they’re still “investigating” dogs other than service animals), and though asthma is legally recognized as a disability for children, it’s not recognized for adults (which means that I’m not legally entitled to the extra time off I require for my frequent doctor’s appointments – if my boss weren’t as awesome as he is, he could legally deny me the ability to take the time off, and then pursue disciplinary action if I went to my doctor’s appointments anyway).
The common law in Canada (since there’s no set standard here for what constitutes a disability) is that if your disability is episodic (diabetes, severe allergies, asthma, etc), you’re not disabled enough to qualify for government assistance or special consideration. There’s a human rights code that says it’s illegal to discriminate against someone who has a disability, and that employers must make “reasonable accomodations” to those with disabilities. But disability is never properly defined, nor is what constitutes a reasonable accomodation. Is extra time off for medical appointments “reasonable”? What about extra unpaid sick days? Paid sick days? Scheduling around the employee’s medical appointments? How about allowing more breaks for medication and self-administered tests? So on and so forth. By and large, it’s left up to individual provinces or even individual employers to decide what is reasonable and what is not, and what constitutes a disability. I’m lucky that I have an awesome boss, but I could just as easily be in real difficulty trying to keep my current job because of the sick days and medical appointment days I take.
I’d love to have a set standard in Canada of what constitutes a disability, and for each level of disability, what constitutes a “reasonable” accomodation. Because if there’s a set standard (extra sick days for those with episodic disabilities, extra breaks for those who need to administer medication, etc), you’ll know going into a job what you’re dealing with and how to manage your health within the confines of your job and its allowances. Employers may say that they’re worried about people taking advantage, but I’ve never met a person who genuinely suffered from a chronic condition who abused their sick days. I’ve met several well people who will take a sick day because they’ve run out of vacation days and want to go to a concert or something, but I’ve never met a person with a disability who will do that. They probably exist, but I suspect they’re far less common because people with episodic disabilities know that they can’t carelessly spend a sick day that they might really need later, and often show up at work with mild-to-moderate flareups when they probably should be at home because they don’t want to spend it unless they’re so ill they absolutely can’t work.
As an example, I know a guy with MS who shows up to work with a patch on his eye and dizzy enough that he has to run his hand on the wall as he walks to know which way is “up”. He does that because he doesn’t want to take a sick day unless he absolutely has to because if he uses up all his sick days for that, he might be SOL one day when he’s bedridden. Likewise, I’ll show up with a yellow zone flare going on because I know there are days when I’m flirting with the red all day and I simply can’t work, and I need to save my sick days for then. My productivity suffers and I probably prolong my flare by so doing, but that’s what you do when you have a chronic condition and you work.
And when you’re well, you work like a fiend so that your employer doesn’t start to think that you’re lazy and might be worth letting go. I work 55-60 hours a week when I’m well so that the weeks that I can’t manage more than 25-30 hours, my boss doesn’t start to think I’m slacking off. Most people that I know who work with chronic episodic conditions are the same way. It would be a huge load of our backs if there was a set standard, same as the worker’s rights standards, so that you’d know going in what your rights are and where you can draw the line.
I very much doubt that Canada is the only place in the West like that. People don’t question making allowances for a person in a wheelchair or with the white cane, but someone who looks and acts “normal” and functions just fine most of the time? Nah, they don’t look sick!
I started to write a response to your comment, but it’s turning into a whole post. It’ll appear later this week, but in the meantime, thanks for this. Very thought-provoking and, apparently, post-producing.