Dolores Perales: A Young Child with Asthma, but Who Needs a Psychiatric Inhaler?

Dolores Perales was 10 years old the first time she couldn’t take a breath and thought she was going to die. Parts of the memory remain vague: she knows it was early April, the start of softball season, and she was playing outside. What she remembers clearly is the tightness in her chest and the rising panic. After it occurred often, her mother took her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with asthma. She says that she has had her inhaler ever since. “One of my younger brothers had asthma; my cousin across the street had asthma. So many of the kids in my classroom had asthma,” Perales says. As a young child, you can start to think this is normal.

Source: Fixing Air Pollution Could Dramatically Improve Health Disparities

The Urban Haze Between the Marathon and the Ambassador Bridge: From the Detroit Skyline to High-Income Countries: How Chemical-Loaded Air is for Everyone in the Era of Industrialization

It was normal that the skyline of Detroit was hazed by the Marathon refinery. The busiest vehicle crossing between the U.S. and Canada was the Ambassador Bridge. The two were not too far away from her home.

It was not until she started traveling with her volleyball, basketball and softball teams that she realized how chemical-laden the air was for everyone. Just a 30-minute drive from her own neighborhood, Perales encountered quiet, tree-lined streets. The suburban air was even more striking than the greenery. She says it smelled different. It didn’t smell bad when I was there.

Pollution was pushed into neighborhoods like Perales’s in southwestern Detroit which were home to immigrant, Black and Hispanic families due to efforts to protect more privileged communities from ugly emissions. The infrastructure needed to support the city had to be placed somewhere, Perales says. This was an area that people didn’t like.

Industrial growth and the amount of pollutants in the air fell together after a long time. In countries with little industrialization, pollution generally does not affect the poor, as they still have relatively clean air. But as they industrialize and increase their reliance on fossil fuels, their air quality begins to worsen. “We’ve gone through this in high-income countries,” Brauer says. “But many low- and middle-income countries are still in the earlier phases of this arc of industrial development.”

The 1948 smog in Donora, Pa., which killed 4,000 people, and the London’s Great Smog, which killed tens of thousands, led to more researchers, physicians and activists beginning to understand the health risks of dirty air.

In some places, smoke was considered an aesthetic problem but not necessarily a medical one. Most people were “only concerned with that which was visible,” says historian Awadhendra Sharan of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. There is a long-standing view that pollution is not good aesthetically.

Air pollution endangers nearly every aspect of human health. The worst threat comes from tiny particles, known as PM2.5, that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter. They can cause respiratory diseases such as asthma, COPD and lung cancer when they are inhaled. These minute particles slip through lung tissue to enter the blood vessels and cause damage to major organs. They cause inflammation that touches every part of the body, including the brain, and have been linked to heart disease, neurodegenerative illnesses and even dementia. Michael Brauer of the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington believes that pollution can affect every organ system.

The National Clean Air Program is an initiative of the Indian government that tasks state and municipal officials with finding solutions to their pollution problems. The effort made funds available to implement solutions and allowed local governments to begin acting on their own air pollution. The shift was a pretty important one. “There’s a lot more still to do, but it’s a very useful first step in getting people involved.”

Policies that work in rich nations can be difficult to implement in lower income countries. Pallavi Pant, a global health researcher at the Health Effects Institute in Boston, points to car emissions as one example. In Kenya and Uganda, the demand for personal vehicles has led to an increase in imported used cars from countries such as Japan. These imported cars were designed to meet emissions-control standards for high-income countries, so they’re built using the newest catalytic converters and other pricey pollution-reducing technology. In poorer countries, locating and paying for parts can be difficult. Before the cars are resold, importers have taken the component out of the cars.

But top-down approaches may still be effective, Pant says. In India, for instance, regulators have begun to enforce more stringent standards for vehicle emissions, an approach shown to motivate the auto industry to find ways to meet those standards so it can continue selling cars. The results from this strategy are not yet visible, Pant says, because it takes time for an older fleet of vehicles to be replaced by new, cleaner ones. Improvements will continue to be seen in the vehicle fleet.

Some countries have made changes due to recognizing this problem. In Rwanda, the off-grid solar-power systems provide electricity to rural areas. About 50 percent of the country had access to electricity by the year 2021, which is due to the use of solar power. India’s goal is to increase the amount of electricity it gets from renewable sources. In May the Indian government announced plans to pause proposals for new coal-burning power plants for the next five years and focus instead on renewable energy. There is no case that places improve or get worse. We really see improvement.

The Impact of the Climate Change on PM2.5 and the Diagnosis for Tropical Diseases: Implications for Global Warming and Climate Change

planting trees is a way to compensate for pollution and clean up some of the mess. Exposure to PM2.5 can significantly reduce blood flow to the brain, which influences stroke risk. The study found that living in Beijing with greenery mitigated any harm. Plants might reduce heart disease risk from PM2.5.

Snakebite envenomation is one of the deadliest tropical diseases. It is a danger to the people with the least resources because they are more likely to get bitten or be unable to get access to the best care. New treatments may be able to save lives.

The range and prevalence of diseases are being changed by the climate crisis. People working outside in the fields and construction sites are at risk for valley virus, as it has expanded into new locations. The illness also disproportionately affects Latino, Asian and Indigenous American people, who are more likely to contract it than white people and who often experience more severe symptoms.

It’s necessary to understand and take a fresh approach to solutions. Researchers are putting in place healthier buildings, design clinical trials with community involvement, and monitor the air and water to improve people’s health. They are creating a movement toward a more livable and more just world.