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• Waiting for My Kids to Get Asthma

  I am a bit of a broken record when it comes to air quality and health. Months before my family moved to Southern California a few years ago, I watched a news report on how the exact city we would be moving to had the highest childhood asthma rate in the universe (or some such superlative). Since arriving, I've considered every cough of my formerly pink-lunged kids as the next step down the spiral of childhood asthma and a youth tied to inhalers and doctors visits. So far so good, but reports like this renew my resolve to obsess about the air (and particulate matter) we breathe. Researchers have found (what I think has always been obvious) ... Read More... Posted Dec 26 2007, 07:50 AM by Madeline Holler with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: research study, asthma, childhood illness, asthma attacks, environmental art, air quality, Southern California

• Asthma Drugs Under FDA Scrutiny

  On the one hand, I should feel relieved that the FDA is cracking down on medications marketed for children, as they did in the recent recall of ineffective and potentially life-threatening children’s cough and cold medicines. On the other hand, what else are parents dosing their kids up with right now – at a doctor’s behest – that could someday warrant closer scrutiny? Like the latest treatment that millions of kids use to, uh, stay alive.  Read More... Posted Nov 29 2007, 03:29 PM by Madeline Holler with | with no comments Filed under: medicine, FDA, recalls, asthma, inhaled steroids, cough medicine, asthma attacks

• Cough, Spew. Build Schools Next to Freeways

  Does it seem like a good idea to build schools close to freeways in the dirtiest city in America? Especially if those schools are for a population of kids who are already at risk for high rates of childhood asthma? Officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District seem to think so. They approved construction of seven new schools within 500 feet of the notoriously clogged LA freeways. Nearly 70 freeway-bordering schools already exist and serve some 60,000 kids and their formerly pink lungs. But LA isn't the only city where the school meets the traffic-jammed road.   Read More... Posted Sep 24 2007, 07:04 PM by Madeline Holler with | with no comments Filed under: school, los angeles, kids health, asthma attacks, pollution

• Back-To-School Can Trigger Asthma Attacks in Kids

  I figured this was going to have something to do with chalk dust and that smell that I swear every elementary school I've ever been in has, but no. Actually, the main reason why tons of asthmatic schoolkids show up in emergency rooms after school starts in September is ... colds. Yep, the common cold. From, you know, being around all those other germy kids. Read More... Posted Sep 01 2007, 08:33 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: kids, health, Canada, asthma, back-to-school, inhalers, asthma attacks