Asthma Attacks

Pennie Komatz, 13, has desperately wanted to go to camp for the last three years. The first year, the asthmatic teen, who cares for her disabled mother, only made it to the waiting list. The second year, her mom was hospitalized and forgot to file the camp application. "She put her arms around me and said, 'That's OK, Mom. You're more important than camp.' Later that night I could hear her crying; it broke my heart," Pamela Komatz wrote earlier this year in a letter to the American Lung Assn.

Justine Sahli had a problem that seemed insurmountable. A single woman recently transplanted from a small Northern California town, she had discovered that dust-like allergens in the bedroom carpet of her Costa Mesa condominium were causing asthma attacks. "I was up five times a night," said Sahli, 52, who suffers from the effects of a 1987 automobile accident that prevent her from performing taxing physical tasks. "It was a serious problem, and very debilitating."

Researchers who conducted separate studies in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Georgia think they've found one explanation for the national upsurge in asthma, and that reason is smog. For papers slated for presentation soon at medical conferences and in journals, they charted hospital visits, hospital admissions and asthma symptoms.

It was just last week that 10-year-old Yvett Ulloa ran the mile in under 12 minutes at Portola Hills Elementary School. While her time wasn't at all special, it was remarkable that the young asthmatic could finish the gym class test at all. "Before she had treatment for her asthma, she couldn't even walk that mile because she would get tired and cough and was so short of breath," said her mother, Raquel Ulloa of Trabuco Canyon.

To understand the latest brouhaha about safe levels of ozone, it helps to understand the difference between science and policy. First the back story. In 2008, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, reduced the allowable level of ozone in the air from 84 parts per billion to 75 ppb. Johnson said the change would lead to cleaner air and improve public health. However, the EPA's independent advisory panel had recommended that the limit be set even lower, in the range of 60 ppb to 70 ppb. Critics, including scientists, environmental advocates and medical associations, such as the American Thoracic Society, accused Johnson and the George W. Bush administration of prioritizing the economic concerns of polluters over the interests of the general public.

If Johnny can't breathe, it's time for Johnny, his parents and his doctor to get educated. That's because childhood asthma--once regarded as a problem that could be ignored because most youngsters would "grow out of it"--now is viewed as a chronic problem that can and should be controlled with regular medication. The change in view occurred within the last 15 years and has had profound effects on patients and their families.

Children today should be breathing easier. They live in a time of cleaner skies, less tobacco smoke and fewer dangerous chemicals in the air. Instead, the teens, toddlers and infants of the '80s and '90s are a generation gasping for breath. Surging quietly to the proportions of a global epidemic, childhood asthma has turned more common and more deadly. Among all races and walks of life. All over the world. And no one can figure out why.

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday banned popular in-home ozone air purifiers, saying studies have found that they can worsen conditions such as asthma that marketers claim they help to prevent. The regulation, which the board said is the first of its kind in the nation, will require testing and certification of all types of air purifiers. Any that emit more than a tiny amount of ozone will have to be pulled from the California market.

A 38-year-old postal clerk was so badly traumatized by a robbery almost three weeks ago that she is still unable to return to work, postal officials said Thursday. The woman, of Lancaster, is an asthmatic who suffered a severe choking attack when the post office was held up at gunpoint March 2, said Pamela Prince, a postal service spokeswoman. Although not hospitalized, the clerk has been unable to return to work ever since, Prince said. About 1:30 p.m.

Ben Pai, a pitcher on the Oceanside High School baseball team, died Thursday night after suffering an asthma attack after playing in a recreational basketball game. He was 17. Pai, a senior, had been playing basketball with friends at the Boys & Girls Club of Oceanside when he had the attack, authorities said. He was taken by Oceanside paramedics to Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, where he was pronounced dead at 10:19 p.m.