As someone who spends a lot of time outside riding my bike to and from work, playing sports with friends, and for part of my job, I have concerns about many of the problems that effect people concerning atmospheric pollution. However, I am pretty lucky in terms of health because I have a pretty good family history when it comes to various diseases. In addition, I am Greek and have relatively dark skin compared to some of my friends who are Irish an other ethnicities so though I still have a risk a skin cancer like everyone else, I may be slightly less at risk then more fair skinned people. The air quality issue that hits me at a personal level the most is during the long hot summer days when Volatile Organic Compounds help create ozone to the point where the air around me almost feels as thick as soup. While this is a problem, it is only a minor issue in my life.

            What I really want to discuss is Asthma. While neither I nor anyone in my family suffers from asthma I am around children who suffer from it all the time. I work as a pre-K teacher with 4-5 and 5 year olds. I have been doing that for 4 years now and I have yet to have a class without at least 2 children suffering from Asthma. I think this is partly due to the children living in the city and being exposed to some of the compounds in the cities polluted air. It is sad that we can’t take the children out to the playground without having a portable nebulizer for the asthma suffers near by. This is obviously not an issue that is specific to my preschool or the Boston area. In Wright’s Environmental Science we learn that over 1.9 million emergency room visits are year are asthma related and the age group with the highest Asthma rates are 0-4 which is reflected in the class I teach. It amazes me that when people in power talk about Health Care reform and prevention that little attention seems to be paid to the environment which leads to more chronic illnesses and exploding health care costs. I rarely hear politicians say that health care reforms should go hand in hand with environmental reforms.

            Now lets look at the issue of Asthma and the pollutants that may help cause it in the Boston Area. Like many issues, there is an element of both class and race when it comes to pollution and rates of Asthma. The rates of hospitalization for Asthma for African American and Hispanic children in the Boston area are much higher then it is for White and Asian children. (http://www.bphc.org/reports/pdfs/report_137.pdf ) There is some slightly good news though; while the rates for children with asthma are still high especially among minorities, there was steep across the board decrease after 2003. (http://www.bphc.org/reports/pdfs/report_224.pdf  p.33 of the report) Furthermore, it should be noted that the highest rates of asthma in the city where in the Roxbury area which is one of the poorest areas in the city. (http://www.bphc.org/reports/pdfs/report_224.pdf  p.35 of the report)

            One of the problems regarding Asthma is that we do not know exactly what causes it. However many of the things that it is associated with such as pollution or living in a home with cockroach dropping are things that higher rates in poor urban areas. This was a theory stated by “

            Dr. Megan Sandel, an asthma specialist at Boston Medical Center who said” that higher rates of asthma among the poor may be linked to the neighborhoods where they live -- neighborhoods with higher levels of environmental pollutants.” (http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/03/27/asthma_hits_ne_hard_study_finds/?page=2 ) While we may not know the exact cause of asthma I think we can all agree that measures should be taken that reduce the pollutants and other things that correlate with it.