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Air Quality Archive
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Swimming for Asthma, Indoor Chlorine – A Balancing Act
(Photo: Flickr user Marcelo Terraza) My daughters were born and raised in coastal Florida, right up until we drove halfway across the country to move to Colorado in February 2009. They’re both excellent swimmers even though they’ve never taken a lesson. Instead, they grew up in the Gulf of Mexico and in our backyard pool, [...] -
Friday Links – Breathing at the Vancouver Olympics
A Question: What Do Red Alder Trees Have to do With Olympics Results? Your answer: They start blooming in Vancouver and Whistler soon, and the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology thinks the pollen could trigger athletes’ allergies and/or asthma, affecting performance. And Speaking of the Winter Olympics and Asthma The Well blog examines [...] -
Friday Links – BPA, Infection = Possible In-Utero Risk Factors
BPA: The Hits Just Keep on Comin’ Bisphenol-A, the chemical in plastic bottles that appears to play a role in reproductive health problems, diabetes and cancer, might contribute to asthma as well. This research on mice suggests exposure to BPA during pregnancy ups babies’ risk for the disorder. Infection During Pregnancy Linked to Asthma in [...] -
Friday Links – Pollution Edition, Smog Limits and Inhaler Power
EPA Setting Strictest-Ever Smog Limits In other words, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is trying to strengthen ground-level ozone standards to the point the health and medical community thought Bush should have – but didn’t – back in the spring of 2008. (Read more on that here and here and here and here and here. According [...] -
Happy Flare-Free Holidays
You know as well as I do that there’s no way to guarantee a triggerless Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, or any other winter holiday. But! Like every other occasion, event, place, time, day, random weather pattern, and otherwise innocuous element of everyday life – when it comes to asthma, this season is full–full–of potential triggers [...] -
The Invisibility of Asthma
One of the problems with asthma and the concept of *looking* sick, beyond your basic lack of understanding in the greater non-asthmatic world, is the way a chronic illness with little to no visual cues doesn’t generate much interest in changing third-party behavior. Recently, Danielle over at Life with These Lungs discussed how public smoking, [...] -
The Rocky Mountain Altitude
Since I live and write in the Mile High City, this blog gets a fair amount of traffic from readers interested in the impact of high altitude on asthma. Here are the posts I’ve written on the subject: (Posts run least to most recent.) When I planned to visit the Denver area with my asthma [...] -
The State of Your Air, from the American Lung Association
It’s that time of the year again. The American Lung Association released its 2009 State of the Air report today. Here’s a tiny sample of the ALA’s key findings, and in light of all the worry over the swine flu outbreak, let’s start with: The Good - Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Atlanta, York, PA and Lancaster, PA [...] -
A is for April, Asthma, & Allergies
Last Friday morning, I woke up to this: This week? The sun shines brightly, the flowers are blooming, and the grass has turned green: This drastic change in weather is normal for the Denver area, or so I’m told. Also normal for this time of year, unfortunately, are seasonal allergy triggers. If all the pollen [...] -
Review – Indoor Air Quality Screen Check Kits
I’ve held off on this air quality review until today, in honor of Earth Day. While I beat the U.S. air policy drum frequently since high pollution levels will affect kids like mine (and yours) first, the state of the air inside the house can pose an even bigger lung challenge for asthmatics. The air [...]
