. "We really are raising our children to ... live fewer years than their parents." '
I'm not sure what Clinton has on his mind when he says this, but it makes me think of this...
The numbers in here are as scary to me as the numbers for peak oil and climate change. 1 out of 6 kids with asthma. Frightening... (and for those who don't know, people still die from asthma attacks)
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Asthma steals joys of childhood
Disease means painful attacks, long trips to the hospital and missed activities for children whose lungs swell and tighten when they try to breathe.
Kerry Adaway-Williams slumps over a bowl of beef soup, too tired to stir the steaming broth.
A gurgling cough, followed by another and another seizes the 12-year-old Fresno boy. He wraps his arms around his stomach, rocks back and forth and moans:
DOCTOR'S VISIT: Kerry Adaway-Williams, 12, breathes into a device that measures the volume of air he can exhale, after an asthma attack forced him to leave school.
(Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee)
"It feels like someone is crushing the sides of me."
Coughing is a signal that Kerry's lungs are irritated and he is on the verge of an asthma attack.
It's a familiar sound in the San Joaquin Valley.
More students carry asthma inhalers to school than take Ritalin tablets for hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorders. Fresno County has the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state. One of six children has the lung disease that makes them wheeze, according to a statewide health survey released in May.
Almost 16% of third- and sixth-grade students in Parlier and Selma show signs of asthma, based on answers to a health questionnaire administered earlier this year. School nurses in Clovis estimate rates are close to 15% in their schools.
No one knows why childhood asthma is so prevalent in the Valley. Less than 10% of children statewide are asthmatics. Nationally, the figure is 5.5% – a third the childhood asthma rate of Fresno County. Poverty and lack of access to health care could skew the Valley's numbers upward.
But researchers speculate there is another factor: dirty air.
Ozone irritates lungs. So do particulates – tiny bits of soot, vapors, metals and dust. The Valley has some of the highest levels of these pollutants in the country.
fresnobee.com |
