Study Finds Crisis Level Of Asthma In State

HARTFORD (AP) — Asthma rates among Connecticut’s school children have reached crisis proportions, a study released Monday showed.

About 8.7 percent, or 54,000 of the state’s 620,000 school-age children, have asthma, according to the study by the Environment and Human Health Inc., a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

The results, based on data collected in 138 of the state’s 169 school districts, were enough to convince experts that childhood asthma is a serious problem.

“Any condition that affects more than one in 12 children, to me, constitutes an epidemic,” said Susan Addiss, a former state health commissioner who participated in the study.

Ms Addiss, who served as health commissioner under former Gov Lowell Weicker, Jr, now is a board member for EHHI.

Ms Addiss and others said the state should use the survey results to track asthma more closely and look for ways to prevent it.

“This is incredibly serious,” said Nancy Alderman, president of North Haven-based EHHI. “We have asthma everywhere in the state.”

While the study found asthma rates among the poor were higher than in wealthy families, there was no difference between asthma rates in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

Paradoxically, the lowest asthma rate was in smogbound Fairfield County, while the highest rate was in relatively rural Windham County. Fairfield is the richest of the state’s eight counties, while Windham is the poorest.

The results do not suggest that poverty alone causes asthma, but it does point out a striking correlation between poverty and asthma, said Dr Mark Cullen, professor of medicine and public health at Yale University School of Medicine.

Asthma, the most common chronic childhood disease, is an incurable condition in which allergic reactions to such things as pollen or dust mites trigger a narrowing of the airways, wheezing, and trouble breathing.

Asthma afflicts some 17 million Americans, including at least 5 million under 18, and kills about 5,400 people annually. While it is partly inherited, less-understood factors also are at work.

The quality of indoor air – in schools, offices, and homes – may be just as important as overall air quality, Dr Cullen and other experts said. Indoor air may be better in wealthy homes, where people tend to smoke less, for instance.

Connecticut’s asthma rate is slightly higher than the national average – an estimated 8 percent – but Dr Cullen said he has no reason to believe the state’s asthma problem is any better or worse than that in other states.

Part of the problem is a lack of data, Dr Cullen and others said, noting that the survey is by far the most comprehensive of its kind ever done in the state. The survey was based on data collected from school nurses on nearly 514,000 children, 83 percent of the state’s school-aged population.

While the overall asthma rate was 8.7 percent, the survey found differing levels of asthma among different age groups. Only 7.8 percent of elementary school children had asthma, compared with 10.2 percent in middle school and 9.4 percent in high school.

In Hartford, advocates have called for declaration of an “asthma emergency” based on high rates of the disease among city children. Officials in Bridgeport and New Haven also have decried environmental factors they say have led to high asthma rates there.

Ms Alderman and other advocates said the Legislature should spend at least $250,000 a year to track and find ways to prevent asthma.