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Tag: asthma
Drought Making California’s Air Quality Worse, American Lung Association Says

Drought Making California’s Air Quality Worse, American Lung Association Says

By Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Despite increasingly aggressive clean air and fuel standards, years of drought are taking a toll on California’s air quality, the American Lung Association says in a new report.

The portion of California’s Central Valley from Fresno to Madera was the most polluted region in the nation on any given day in 2013 with microscopic particulates, or soot, thanks in large part to the changing climate and drought, according to an annual report on air quality released Wednesday by the American Lung Association.

“Continuing drought and heat may have increased dust, grass fires, and wildfires” that have hurt the Central Valley’s air quality in short-term particle pollution, the report stated. “The impact of climate change is particularly apparent in the West, where the heat and drought create situations ripe for episodes of high-particle days.”

The report evaluated metropolitan areas based on recorded levels of ozone, the main ingredient in smog, and also measured particles, or soot, that tend to build up in colder, winter months. It looked at the annual average for cities and the worst on average in a 24-hour period. The report used data gathered between 2011 and 2013.

In both time frames, a swath of California’s Central Valley topped the rankings for unhealthy particulate pollution. The Fresno-to-Madera region was the most polluted year-round for the second year in a row and the worst in a 24-hour cycle.

Bakersfield was ranked second, the area from Visalia to Hanford was third and the area from Modesto to Merced was fourth for short-term and annual particle pollution.

Los Angeles County actually performed worse in the 24-hour rankings this year than it did the previous year, the report noted.

Despite great strides in recent years, L.A. County again topped the nation’s list of metropolitan areas with the worst smog for 2013, according to the report.

L.A. County has ranked the worst for smog among metropolitan areas in all but one of the association’s 16 reports. Despite the high rank, the report said the city “exemplified” progress in reducing smog.

Its three-year average for 2011-13 was its best since the report began and showed a one-third reduction in the number of unhealthy air days.

Ranking fifth on the list of smog-polluted areas nationally, according to the report, was the area from Sacramento to Roseville.

Smog forms in warm, sunny weather with little wind. More than 138 million people, or 44 percent of the nation, live in areas with unhealthy air, according to the report.

Still, the situation has improved over the last ten years.

“Even the more polluted cities had significantly fewer unhealthy ozone days than they had a decade ago,” the report states.

Poor air quality can most adversely affect the young and old, those with lung disease and asthma, heart disease and diabetes.

The report said that the Environmental Protection Agency’s current ozone air quality standards are “woefully inadequate” and called for the government to adopt stricter standards proposed by the EPA last year.

Photo: Ben Amstutz via Flickr

First U.S. Child Dies From Enterovirus D68

First U.S. Child Dies From Enterovirus D68

Washington (AFP) — A child in the northeastern U.S. state of Rhode Island has become the first to die from an ongoing outbreak of a respiratory virus, enterovirus D68, health officials said Wednesday.

The child died from an unusual combination of enterovirus D68 — which has infected more than 470 kids across the United States since August — and a staph infection.

“Infection by both Staphylococcus aureus sepsis and EV-D68 is a very rare combination that can cause very severe illness in children and adults,” the Rhode Island Department of Health said in a statement.

Enterovirus D68 typically causes flu-like symptoms, but in some cases it can cause wheezing and breathing problems that may require hospitalization.

A spike in cases among patients nationwide has reached 472 people, most of them children, in 41 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Concerns have also mounted over the emergence of nine cases in Colorado where children had respiratory infections that were followed by acute neurologic illness, including sudden limb weakness.

Experts are investigating whether there may be a link between the enterovirus outbreak and the paralysis cases.

Four cases of children who had recent respiratory infections, followed by neurologic illness with limb weakness are also being tracked in Boston, Massachusetts.

“At this time, a connection between EV-D68 and the neurologic illness with limb weakness has not been definitively proven,” Boston Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

The children range in age from four to 15 years old. One is in intensive care, two are hospitalized, and one has been discharged, the hospital added.

Some enteroviruses, including D68, have been shown in rare cases in the past to be capable of causing neurologic symptoms and sudden muscle weakness.

Viruses in this family typically circulate in the late summer to early fall, before flu season begins in earnest.

If the seasons start to overlap, experts say the potential for dual infections could be particularly dangerous for children with asthma.

There is no vaccine to prevent EV-D68, and frequent hand-washing is the best way to prevent it, experts say.

“We are all heartbroken to hear about the death of one of Rhode Island’s children,” said Michael Fine, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health.

“Many of us will have EV-D68. Most of us will have very mild symptoms and all but very few will recover quickly and completely. The vast majority of children exposed to EV-D68 recover completely.

AFP Photo/Marc Piscotty

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U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Obama Administration Limits On Air Toxins

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Obama Administration Limits On Air Toxins

By Neela Banerjee, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever limits on air toxins, including emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, preserving a far-reaching rule the White House had touted as central to President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda.

In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled that the mercury rule “was substantively and procedurally valid,” turning aside challenges brought both by Republican-led states that had argued the rule was onerous and environmental groups that had contended it did not go far enough.

The EPA welcomed the decision, calling it “a victory for public health and the environment.” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said. “These practical and cost-effective standards will save thousands of lives each year, prevent heart and asthma attacks, while slashing emissions of the neurotoxin mercury, which can impair children’s ability to learn.”

Environmentalists also hailed the ruling, which John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council called a “sweeping victory” for the EPA. Walke said that the mercury and air toxins rule was arguably the single most “important regulation driving the cleanup of old dirty coal plants.”

The combustion of coal for power generation releases toxins such as mercury into the air. Through precipitation, mercury returns to the earth and changes into a “highly toxic” substance called methylmercury. Methylmercury enters the food chain and contaminates fish that people consume. The chemical is particularly dangerous for pregnant women, who can easily pass the toxin to their fetuses.

The EPA estimates that the mercury and air toxins rule will prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks annually.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Smoking Bans Can Help Kids’ Health, Researchers Say

Smoking Bans Can Help Kids’ Health, Researchers Say

By Mary MacVean, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — If legislation banning smoking protects people from disease, then the proportion of the world population covered by such laws is too low — just 16 percent, according to researchers.

“Smoke-free legislation is associated with substantial reductions in preterm births” and hospital visits for asthma, the researchers wrote in the Lancet last week. That conclusion, combined with the benefits of such laws to adults, is strong support for the recommendation of the World Health Organization to create smoke-free environments, wrote the researchers from the Maastricht University School for Public Health, Hasselt University and the University of Leuven, both in Belgium, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Estimates suggest that pediatric hospital admissions for asthma and preterm births decline by 10 percent after smoke-free legislation is enacted, making the public health effects of such bans “considerable,” the researchers said. At present, worldwide, more than 11 percent of children — about 15 million babies — are born premature each year.

The researchers found 11 studies from 2008 to 2013 that covered more than 2.5 million births and 247,168 asthma incidents. Five of the studies concerned local smoking bans in North America, and six concerned national bans in Europe.

About 5.7 million people die of smoking annually, and 600,000 people die of secondhand smoke, the researchers said.

“The effects of in-utero and early-life exposures on health in childhood and later life is a growing specialty” for researchers. Because their lungs and immune systems are still developing, they are at particularly risk to the effects of secondhand smoke, they said.

Among the outcomes of early exposure to tobacco smoke are stillbirth, preterm birth, asthma, infant mortality and respiratory infections. And recent studies, the researchers wrote, have implicated childhood secondhand smoke exposures in the development of noncommunicable diseases in later life.

The researchers said some “knowledge gaps” remain, including the effects of such legislation on low-income countries. And the researchers said there was a risk of bias in some of the 11 studies — with six of them having a moderate risk and one a high risk.

Photo: DucDigital via Flickr