The Invisible Epidemic
The rise of asthma in urban communities is beginning to reach epic proportions. It is a disease that is not limited to the United States, but is endemic to all developed nations and is especially prevalent in urban communities. The drastic rise in asthma and related pulmonary illnesses is surprising because benchmark studies have resulted in an as yet unknown understanding of the disease. All scientists agree, however, that this is a pathology whose etiology can be traced as an overt effect of a modern Western culture.
The effects of asthma are wide reaching and can be studied from many viewpoints. From a societal perspective, sociologists and public health officials cringe when they read the statistics for asthma in children in a poor urban area of New York, versus the national average. The Mott Haven neighborhood of The Bronx, which has a median household income less than one-third of the U.S. median, has an asthma-related hospitalization rate eight times higher than the national average. From an environmental perspective, environmental scientists are discovering that vehicle exhaust can acerbate asthma's symptoms. In Mott Haven a local newspaper counted 550 passing trucks passing one street corner near a school in one hour. In Tehran, Iran, the worlds eighth largest city, levels of industrial pollutants from fossil fuel combustion have risen to four times higher than the standards adopted by the World Health Agency, in only ten years, and asthma related hospitalizations have also risen dramatically. From a cultural perspective the research is also frightening. Research from the Albert Einstein College of medicine indicates that asthma rates may be rising as a direct result of our west...
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...inherent in modern civilization.
Bibliography:
Works Cited
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Asthma is the leading cause of chronic illness in children and is responsible for nearly 10% of the Emergency Room visits for children <15 year of age. It occurs in as many as 10%-12% of children in the United States and is gradually growing. Asthma can begin at any age , but most children have their first symptoms by age five. Because Camp Wapiti is for children ages 8-13 exclusively, this report will focus primarily on childhood asthma.
...n improve adherence to medication” (Toole, 2013). School-based interventions through an asthma program clearly show to be the most practical, cost-effective way to reach out to children with asthma and manage their condition.
There were also “92’000 emergency-room visits and 620,000 visits to a doctor’s office in a year”(David Suzuki Foundation) liked to air pollution-related illness which sums u...
Ford ME, Havstad SL, Tilley BC, Bolton MB. Health outcomes among African American and Caucasian adults following a randomized trial of an asthma education program. Ethn Health 1997 Nov;2(4):329-39
-Prevention management includes teaching the patient who has persistent airflow obstruction and frequent attacks of asthma to avoid triggers of acute attacks and to pre-medicate before exercising.
[1] According to the American Lung Association, in 2007 about 34.1 million Americans, including 9 million children, were diagnosed with asthma during their lifetime. In Australia, there are a total of around 2 million people who had asthma; this ...
graders 9-12 and 6.0% of students in grades 6-8 smoke. The American Lung Association estimates that every year in Alexandria there are 893 cases of lung cancer being diagnosed. In 2003, 7.6% of Virginia’s adults and 8.3% of Virginia’s children had an active asthma condition. Air pollutants such as CO, oxides of nitrogen , PM, and SO2 can cause long-term injury to the lungs and breathing passages, nerve and brain damage and also birth defects. (https://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/health/info)
my family grew up in a small town called " Llera de Canales." this little town is in Tamaulipas, Mexico. For instance all my family grew up there consequently, they never get sick cause of the air because the pollution there has a very high quality. As a result they never go to the doctor and grew up very healthy. they never had problems with their lungs.
Asthma is a disorder of the respiratory system in which the passages that enable air to pass into and out of the lungs periodically narrow, causing coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath. This narrowing is typically temporary and reversible, but in severe attacks, asthma may result in death. Asthma most commonly refers to bronchial asthma, an inflammation of the airways, but the term is also used to refer to cardiac asthma, which develops when fluid builds up in the lungs as a complication of heart failure. This article focuses on bronchial asthma.
Pedersen, Soren, and Stanley J. Szefler, eds. Childhood Asthma. Vol. 209. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006. Print.
Dr. Paul Blanc’s works focus almost exclusively on occupational and environmental exposures that impact the lungs. In his career, Dr. Paul Blanc focused much of his research on the impacts of Asthma, how the condition had become more widespread over the years and potential remedies in treating the condition. Within that same time, along with many others in academia, Dr. Paul Blanc was interested in the effects of cigarette smoke. However, Dr. Paul Blanc’s interest was not only focused on the health effects of cigarettes, but rather, how the known effects from cigarettes compounded other respiratory effects found in occupational settings. Dr. Paul Blanc
Asthma is one of the most common chronic disease in young children in the world (Vasbinder 531). The most common way of controlling asthma when a child had a difficult time breathing is an inhaled corticosteroid. In recent years’ children have not been abusing the use of their inhalers. There are studies that have been shown that if the inhaled corticosteroid, is abuse that it causes exacerbations. Which in turns causes children to relay heavy on the inhaled corticosteroid. The idea is to explore the methods to control how inhaled corticosteroids is used and keep children from over abusing them.
Infections and respiratory problems in young children can cause serious wheezing and asthma-like symptoms. These problems with breathing can develop into asthma as the child grows. In some cases, asthma that develops in this way can dissipate as the child gets older, but that's not always true.
Asthmatic children are especially at risk. Exposure to secondhand smoke increases the number of episodes and severity of symptoms in hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children. Between 200,000 and 1,000,000 asthmatic children have their condition worsened by secondhand smoke.
Carbajal-Arroyo, L. (n.d.). Impact of Traffic Flow on the Asthma Prevalence Among School Children in Lima, Peru. Informa healthcare. Retrieved February 5, 2011, from http://informahealthcare.com/doi/full/10.1080/02770900701209756