Recent studies have shown that babies born to mothers who were exposed to high levels of pollen in their last trimester of pregnancy have a much greater chance of developing asthma. One of the main keys with asthma prevention is avoidance.
When you have asthma the typical garden is not a very friendly place at all. There are mold spores to contend with and worst of all is the pollen. Typical gardens have pollen producing male trees and male shrubs and other plants that can provoke asthma attacks. Almost anyone with asthma will tell you that their asthma can be triggered by a good number of things, but pollen is often number one for causing an attack. Garden allergies are common, but they need not be. Allergies from gardening could be largely a thing of the past if were willing to make some simple changes.
In fall of 1999 in Richmond, Virginia the American Lung Association of Virginia (ALAV) built a new Breathe Easy office and headquarters. They had this entire large building constructed with the latest innovations in green construction and sustainable design. No construction materials were used that would off gas any harmful or toxic chemicals, no materials were used that would trigger asthma or allergies. Every attempt was made to build something that would be pleasant and healthy to work in. The people who work in this office now will tell you too, that they all notice what a great improvement it is. Their office is a healthy building.
The ALA decided it would make perfect sense to landscape their new healthy building (in some states these are now called Health Houses) with an allergy free landscape. OPALS (the plant/allergy 1-10 numerical ranking system) was used to select only those plant materials that were either very low pollen, low allergy, or that were totally pollen free, allergy free. In effect they created the first true asthma friendly garden in the US.
Health Houses in other states are now also adding pollen free landscapes to their green construction, green buildings. A new Health House is about to be built in Pennsylvania, and the PA Association of Landscapers and Nurserymen are helping to surround it with an asthma friendly landscape.
Schools too are getting into the clean air act, and in the city of Visalia, California, the Tulare County Asthma Coalition recently directed the asthma friendly landscaping of a newly built elementary school.
Twelve keys to building your own asthma friendly garden:
1.Plant lots of female trees and female shrubs. Not only will these not shed any pollen, they will also trap a good deal of pollen that may stay in from somewhere else. Think of these female plants as natures air cleaners.
2.Use only low pollen or no pollen lawns. There are types of lawns now that are pretty well pollen free and these are a big improvement over some of the older lawn varieties. In southern states, if you have a common Bermuda grass lawn, consider replacing it with a newer, more asthma friendly hybrid Bermuda grass. Princess 77 is a new Bermuda grass hybrid that can be planted from seed. It is next to pollen free, grows very low and tight, and is especially good looking.
3.With OPALS 1 is best, 10 is worst. Use only plants with rankings of 1-5. The more plants in your gardens that have rankings ranging from 1-3, the friendlier your place will be for anyone with allergies or asthma.
4.Remove any trees or shrubs with rankings over OPALS #7. The woody landscape plants with rankings of 8-10 are all sure-fire allergy triggering plants and you can live without them.
5.Replace any removed high pollen, asthma triggering plants with their opposite, female trees or female shrubs. Also good as replacements are perfect flowered plants that are known to be very low pollen producers. These will all have good (low) OPALS rankings.
6.Use only plants that are well adapted to your own area. If you can find natives that have low allergy rankings, consider using them. Look around your own neighborhood, and see for yourself, which kinds of plants seem to be flourishing there already. For almost every kind of plant used in landscaping, there is now a no or low pollen version of it, if you know what to look for.
7.Use a wide variety of plant materials; diversity is good. Biodiversity always makes sense. The more diverse our gardens are he fewer problems well have with insects and molds.
8.Avoid plants with strong fragrances or odors, as they can cause asthma. Dont plant jasmines or similar vines next to entrances or exits and certainly dont use them underneath bedroom windows.
9.For mulch, use rock or gravel instead of bark to cut down on toxic mold spores in the garden. Flat stones or pavers also make good, mold free mulching materials.
10.To further eliminate mold spores, encourage wild birds in your garden. Virtually all wild birds eat insects, and insect damage triggers outbreaks of mold. Even the tiny hummingbirds actually eat a large number of insects. Put up a hummingbird feeder!
11.Keep your plants healthy. This too will cut down on both pollen and mold. When it is hot and windy, do some irrigating. Fertilize everything in the garden spring and fall. If plants are crowding each other too much, thin them out. If tree branches overhead are putting your whole yard in deep shade, consider having the tree thinned to let in more light. Fresh air and light are the enemies of molds.
12.If a tree, shrub, vine or any other plant always looks sickly, looks dirty, or always attracts bugs, then shovel prune it. Dig it up and get rid of it. Replace it with something easier to grow. Dont get caught up in having to spray insecticides all the time, as they too can easily cause asthma and allergies.

Make your garden a fun, stress free zone. Be sure to have a few comfortable garden chairs to sit in, and a little table of some sort is always good too. Wind chimes, bird feeders, and birdbaths can add greatly to your enjoyment and cost little. A beautiful, pollen free, allergy free, asthma friendly garden can be just the place for healthy children, and a great place for anyone to relax and enjoy the great outdoors. For more advice on low allergen gardening, look up allergy free gardening on the Internet, or go to your local library and read some books on this new important subject.

Tom Ogren is the author of five published books, including: Allergy-free Gardening, Safe Sex in the Garden (Ten Speed Press), and What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing the Perfect Lawn (AOL Time Warner Books). Tom has an MS degree in Agriculture-Horticulture, taught landscape gardening for twenty years, owned and operated two wholesale-retail nurseries, and in northern Minnesota was host of the popular Public Radio call-in gardening show, Tom Ogrens Wild World of Plants!
Tom (Thomas Leo Ogren) has published hundreds of articles on health and gardening. His work has appeared in diverse publications such as South Africas Veldt and Field, in Womens Day, Alternative Medicine, the Burpee Seed Catalog, Sunset Magazine, Landscape Architecture, Der Spiegel, The London Times, The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, and even the Jerusalem Post. He has also made numerous appearances on HGTV and his work was the focus of two made for TV documentaries, one by the Canadian Discovery Channel.
Tom has been interviewed on National Public Radios Weekend Edition and his groundbreaking research was featured on The CBS Evening News. He is a frequent lecturer for garden clubs, arboretums, civic groups, hospitals, medical groups, Master Gardeners, and professional associations of landscapers, landscape designers, writers, nursery people, arborists, and urban foresters. He has become well known for his fun, high energy, highly informative, unusual and provocative talks. Tom is a member of the Professional Landscape Designers Association, and the GWA, the Garden Writers of America. Unlike many well-published authors, he still tries to answer all of his own email. You can contact Tom through his website, at: www.allergyfree-gardening.com

Notice of Copyright: Copyright Thomas Leo Ogren

About the Author

Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening, Ten Speed Press. Tom does consulting work on for the USDA, county asthma coalitions, and the American Lung Associations. He has appeared on CBS, HGTV and The Discovery Channel. His book, Safe Sex in the Garden, was published 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Books published his latest: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing the Perfect Lawn. His website: www.allergyfree-gardening.com

Written By: Thomas Leo Ogren

Posted: February 29th, 2008 under Asthma.
Comments: none

Asthma has increased 300 percent in children in the past ten years. Research by WHO, in Germany, finds prostate cancer, breast cancer, and other cancers increasing due to mold-related problems.

Mold is the number one health problem with one in every three persons affected by mold and one in ten with a severe problem related to mold. These can range from the common cold, tonsillitis, otitis, sinusitis, bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia, to cancer.

Check your home’s humidity levels; buy or borrow a hygrometer and watch the changes in R.H. that occur throughout a typical day in different rooms of the house and over the heating season. To inspect your home for mold growth, winter is the best time except for basements which should also be inspected in the summer. With a flashlight and some simple tools, go through the entire house, both inside and outside, searching for moisture damage and mold growth and their potential causes.

The Stachybotrus species of mold is dangerous; it will start growing in 80 percent humidity but, once established, can grow at 55 percent humidity. This mold can develop from the decay of building materials and is much harder to control. If more than ten square feet develop, it is advised that a professional clean it up. When you see a small speck of mold, that’s only part of the problem - the remainder being inside the walls.

‘Frog Page’ is a manual of the health of the environment and states that frogs are declining because of mold.

Some of the causes of mold are brush and trees within 30 feet of the building; venting the clothes drier inside the home; furniture against outside walls; old fill, causing building movement leading to cracks causing water ingress; concrete will wick up water even to several feet above ground; ventilation not directed outside, such as the kitchen range hood, which should be vented outside; plants and aquariums; drying clothing indoors; standing water, such as keeping cold water in the kitchen sink; hot tubs; using several gallons of water to wash floors.

‘Sick Building Syndrome’ is caused by moisture and mold growth. It migrates through foundations up from the soil. A dehumidifier is not the final answer as it only does the air and not the walls. What is required is a combination of ventilation, circulation, and heat.

Carpenter ants and termites will smell moisture from miles away and they only attack damaged wood.

Ventilation alone won’t help a crawl space. In the summer the vents bring in warm, moist air.

Mold forms on the coldest space. The only
way to deal with it is with heat. Wall heaters with fans are more efficient than baseboard heaters.

Pull furniture and store material away from exterior walls and off basement floors; leave closet doors ajar; leave bedroom doors open as much as possible; undercut doors; don’t block or deflect warm air registers; open drapes, blinds, and curtains; set the furnace fan to run continuously. This will use more electricity but can be offset by installing a two-speed energy-efficient motor; don’t cut off the heating supply or close off unused rooms.

Uninsulated or poorly insulated areas such as exterior corners or foundation walls, should be improved with additional insulation. Be sure to install an air-vapor barrier, usually polyethylene, on the room side of the insulation to prevent hidden condensation behind the insulation. Seal hidden opening into the attic, tighten the attic hatch, weatherstrip and caulk around windows and doors, gasket electrical outlets, caulk baseboards and seal the top of foundations. Using an air conditioner on muggy summer days also helps take out the moisture.

Humidifiers, dehumidifiers, air-conditioning units and filtration systems can be a source of mold growth if they are not regularly cleaned.

Key areas to check for moisture sources leading to condensation inside the home are roof leaks [especially at chimneys, flashings, skylights and eavestroughing]; wall leaks [especially at window and door flashing and sills]; foundation leaks [especially where the ground slopes toward the foundation]; and plumbing leaks [especially at toilet bases and under sink drains].

Check any fuel-burning equipment - furnaces, hot water heaters, boilers, fireplaces, and wood stoves - to ensure that they are venting properly. A blocked chimney could mean that combustion products, including large amounts of water vapor, are spilling into your house. Along with that moisture come dangerous combustion gasses, such as carbon monoxide, which cause deaths every year. Have heating equipment and venting systems checked by a trained service person.

If your moisture remedial work includes extensive air sealing, be sure that all fuel-burning equipment has an adequate supply of combustion air. High efficiency furnaces, for example, have their own air supplies and exhaust fans but conventional equipment may rely on house air for combustion and on ‘natural draft’ to move combustion products up the chimney flue. If starved for air or overpowered by an exhaust fan somewhere else in the house, such equipment can spill combustion gasses indoors. Examples of this include stains near the vent of a gas water heater, smoke entering the room from a wood-burning fireplace or stove, and pilot lights being blown out.

Mold growth often occurs in out-of-the-way areas like closets, corners, walls behind furniture and unused rooms. Increasing air circulation to these areas warms the cold surfaces and lowers local humidity levels.

To solve moisture problems, cover any exposed earth in a crawl space or basement with heavy polyethylene, sealed and weighted-down; slope soil away from foundations to keep basement walls and slab dry; patch any foundation leaks; don’t use humidifiers, unless humidity levels are below 30 percent R.H.; avoid drying firewood indoors; operate bathroom exhaust fans during a bath or shower; use your range hood exhaust when cooking; avoid steam-cleaning carpets in winter; clean mold from wood and gyproc with a 10 percent to 30 percent solution of hydrogen peroxide applied with a spray bottle. This is more effective than bleach and water.

If you use chlorine bleach, mix one part bleach with two parts water and a little detergent to clean nearby surfaces. Leave for 15 minutes and rinse well. Use gloves and protective glasses and good ventilation. Badly mildewed carpets, furnishings and books will probably need to be thrown out.

Molds are parasitic micro-organisms that appear as black, white or multi-colored stain or fuzz. In addition to causing asthma, they can cause other allergies and serious health problems. There are tens of thousand of varieties of molds and are difficult and expensive to identify, even for experts. Health officials recommend eliminating all molds from inside your home.

Most mold spores need condensation or damp materials to germinate and once are established, many colonies generate their own moisture and can continue to survive even under dry conditions. They also need mild temperatures and a source of food, such as house dust or drywall paper.

Resources:

1. Natural Resources Canada [NRCan] “Air-Leakage Control” Pg. 11 [20 Feb 2002]

2.WHO [World Health Organization] [20 Feb. 2002]

3. Cormier, Dr. Y., Centre de Recherche, Hopital Laval, 2725 Chemin Ste-Foy, Ste Foy, Quebec Canada, G1V-4G5 Institut de Recherche en Sante et Securite du Travail (IRSST), Quebec Canada July 21, 1999; revised; accepted for publication November 26, 1999.

4. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/ [20 Feb. 2002]

5. http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/qa/105-10news/NIEHSnews.html [20 Feb.2002]

6. http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/FS/fs-043-01/
[20 Feb. 2002]

About the Author

Margot B, Writer, Information Broker, Web Developer at Margot B & Associates mailto:margotb@wonderport.com http://www.writers.Org-HQ.com

Written By: Margot B

Posted: February 26th, 2008 under Asthma.
Comments: none

Many asthmatics want to dive, but unfortunately, there are a number of concerns about the effect of asthma on dive safety. Dive physicians have traditionally taken a very conservative approach to asthma in dive fitness assessments. Mention of the word “Asthma” and potential divers were ejected from the surgery faster than you could say, “but it wasn’t serious and it’s gone away now”

More recently, some dive physicians have begun to take a more liberal, informed consent approach in assessing previous or mild asthmatics for diving. Some ex-sufferers previously prevented from diving can now dive, after making an informed choice about the possible risks. To understand this, it is first necessary to understand what asthma actually is. Asthma is a condition affecting medium to small airways in the lungs. In asthmatics, these airways are prone to narrowing, which impedes the flow of air into and, in particular, out of the small air sacs (alveoli) where gas exchange occurs. The trigger for these events is often an allergic response to a specific stimulus.

Some asthmatics also respond to physical stimuli such as exercise or a change from breathing warm air to cold air. The result is that the patient feels short of breath and there may be an audible wheeze due to airway narrowing which can cause severe breathing difficulty, which in severe cases, can certainly be fatal. One of the biggest problems in discussing asthma, and this is particularly true when discussing asthma in the context of diving, is that the spectrum of severity is extraordinarily wide.

There are three main concerns about asthma and diving. First, asthma may make divers more likely to suffer a dive-related illness. We are all taught that the most important rule in diving is to breathe normally and to never hold your breath. If a diver ascends while holding his breath, the expanding air can damage delicate lung tissue, and air may be introduced directly into the blood, travel to the brain and cause an arterial gas embolism (AGE).

There is concern that an asthmatic may suffer narrowing or blocking of small airways during a dive, and that expansion of any trapped air during ascent may lead to the same problem. There is also concern that use of reliever medication, such as Ventolin, prior to diving may cause the lungs to be less efficient at filtering out the venous nitrogen bubbles we all have after dives. These bubbles may then circulate through the lungs and reach arteries where they might, in theory, be more likely to contribute to the development of decompression illness.

Second, it is recognised that an asthma attack in the water may severely compromise the diver’s safety by incapacitating him and causing an inability to function effectively. Indeed, it is hard to argue that difficulty breathing would not be a decided disadvantage if you were caught in a current that was sweeping you away from your boat.

Third, it is a plausible concern that diving itself could precipitate asthma. Asthma can be precipitated by the exercise associated with diving, or by the irritant effect of breathing a cold, dry gas. It is also recognised that regulators frequently leak a little salt water, and that some of this may be nebulised into a mist during breathing. This mist can irritate the airways and precipitate narrowing in vulnerable individuals.

The problem with all these very plausible concerns is that we have no idea how truly significant they are as there has been very little historic research. There is some data from retrospective surveys and these reveal many asthmatics (including active asthmatics) do dive, and that while their relative risk in diving may be more, their absolute risk remains reasonably low. e.g. one survey indicated that asthmatic is twice as likely to suffer an AGE as a non-asthmatic. Sound bad? Maybe. But if the risk of AGE for a non-asthmatic is one in every 50,000 dives, then the risk for an asthmatic is one in 25,000; a clear illustration of the fact that not very much multiplied by two is still not very much.

In this day and age where people do not want to take responsibility for their own actions, the most prudent thing for a dive physician to do when an asthmatic walks into his surgery is to say “Bog off, you’re unfit”. This happens frequently, and who can blame the doctors? However, while it might be defensive medicine, it is not necessarily good medicine. Indeed, such subjective pronouncements often motivate the candidate to go to another doctor and lie about having asthma.

There is now an alternative informed consent basis of assessment. Fundamentally, this means clearly and comprehensively explaining the risks of diving to the candidate, and letting him make an informed choice about whether to proceed. However, there are some important provisos. In the context of asthma, most dive physicians would agree that the more active the asthma, the greater the risk in diving. Those candidates who suffer serious attacks, wheeze relatively often or who use reliever medications regularly, cannot be considered for diving, even on an informed consent basis, because rightly or wrongly, the risks are perceived to be too high.

On the other hand, previous asthmatics and milder cases may be subject to little extra risk, and it is reasonable to let them, as intelligent adults, make up their own minds on the matter. Every day of our lives we make decisions that inherently involve weighing risk against benefit. We choose to get on planes, we choose to play rugby, we choose to ride bicycles on busy roads, all because we decide the benefit outweighs the risk. There is no reason diving should be any different in this regard, although dive candidates are much less well-informed about its inherent risks than they are about these other intuitively obvious risk situations. It is the dive physician’s role in this setting to sufficiently educate candidates so they can make an informed choice.

A sensible approach to the asthmatic dive candidate is to first take a detailed history of his problem. The obvious active asthmatics are told they cannot dive, and the reasons are clearly explained. Asthmatics who have not experienced symptoms of asthma or have not used medication for years are usually able to dive without any special investigations.

The most problematic are mild asthmatics i.e. those candidates who wheeze once or twice a year when they have colds; or who wheeze a little in the spring when certain pollens are around, etc. With these candidates, a long discussion about the potential risks in diving implied by their asthmatic history, is usually followed with tests to check that neither exercise nor the breathing of nebulised salt water (at the same concentration as sea water) provoke airway narrowing. If these tests are negative and patients exhibit a clear understanding of the issues and wish to proceed, then we should be happy for them to dive. Unfortunately, to conduct and document this process properly is a time consuming and expensive exercise, but at least it’s better than being told to “clear off” without so much as an explanation.

About the Author

Sheldon Hey is the founder of Dive The World (http://www.DiveTheWorldThailand.com)and has been an passionate scuba diving professional for many years. Sheldon and the Dive The World Team would love to share their experience with you to ensure your next diving trip meets all your expectations. Follow this link if you would like to read more about Sheldons scuba diving experiences.

Written By: Sheldon Hey

Posted: February 11th, 2008 under Asthma.
Comments: none