Asthma home-visiting program targets household triggers

Posted on November 18, 2014

Pets, carpet, scented cleaning products, wood-burning fireplaces most people dont think of them as harmful or dangerous.

But for asthmatics, they can trigger attacks that leave them struggling for air and often requiring a trip to the emergency room.

Asthma has long been recognized as a problem among Yakima Valley children. Sixteen years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency provided a grant to the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic for a pilot program based on home visits that would bring attention to indoor air as a contributing factor.

More recently, outdoor air pollution, in particular pollutants from large animal-feeding operations, or AFOs, was linked to asthma in a research study from the University of Washington.

Our findings indicate that children with asthma may experience short-term respiratory effects following increased exposure to airborne AFO pollutants, adding to a growing body of research evidence that AFO-related air pollution may cause community-level health effects, the study concluded.

While the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency has a program to reduce outdoor air pollution caused by large-scale dairies, the Farm Workers Clinic educates families on how their home environment can affect an asthmatic childs health, explaining symptoms, triggers and simple ways to asthma-proof a living space.

The idea was that if we can not only educate a family on asthma medication and what asthma is, but if we can also talk to them about their indoor air, we could hopefully reduce symptoms and improve quality of life, program coordinator Griselda Arias said.

Asthma is a chronic lung disease that causes frequent episodes of wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and coughing at night or in the early morning as airways in the lungs tighten up and produce excess phlegm.

The home-visiting program started out as a pilot through a grant in 1998, when the EPA first started looking at indoor air as a serious concern. The program was supported by grants for several years after that, but now its subsidized by Farm Workers and staffed with AmeriCorps volunteers.

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Asthma home-visiting program targets household triggers