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To see further support of the research shown here, including hospital asthma admission rates and premature deaths in US cities/states see: 'Death, Disease and Dirty Power' and later reports at www.cleartheair.org

The heavy metal content of the PM2.5 emissions of some fuels is a direct cause of asthma.

 



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[House dust mite "theory" has bitten the dust]

"the tendency to asthma may be completely cured by a slight change of locality, as, for example, by transference from the country to the town or from one town to another" [Black's Medical Dictionary, 18th Edition, 1944, page 76]

Childhood asthma rates are an accurate indicator of the health of a community, as proved by Dr Dick van Steenis' asthma survey in West Wales [see "Airborne pollutants and acute health effects" The Lancet, 8 April 1995 and Dr van Steenis' lecture to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, 3 November 2003] and elsewhere.

Dr van Steenis mapped out childhood asthma rates and proved huge variations, e.g. 38% of four to 5-year-olds were chronic asthmatic in downwind Whitland, Carmarthenshire, compared with just 1% in Aberaeron and other locations upwind of emissions from the oil refinery/power station complex at Milford Haven waterway.

Childhood asthma rates in the 1950s were 1 in 300, mainly due to moulds from damp houses, then increased due to OP pesticides in the 1960s, causing multiple sensitivities. These two causes worked through the mast cells and increased asthma rates to between 1% and 7% depending on exposure.

A change in fuel in the UK from coal to heavy oil - and under the present government to waste mixes, led to particles emitted being much smaller and entering the lungs, affecting the macrophage/T-lymphocyte system and raising asthma rates as high as 50% plus due to the explosion in the number of PM2.5s, which are deliberately not measured in the UK, unlike USA.

The huge increase in UK asthma rates are mainly due to industrial emissions of PM2.5s, i.e. particles of 2.5 microns and below, which are small enough to enter the lungs.

Michael Ryan used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain numbers of Shropshire primary school children bringing inhalers to school for asthma and found similar wide variations in the percenatges of Year 3 to 6 children bringing inhalers to school for asthma: i.e. from less than 2% to 100%.

Dr Dick van Steenis proved that living upwind of industrial PM2.5 sources such as oil refineries, incinerators and waste fuel burning industry, vehicles and trains is the only way to avoid high rates of asthma and many other illnesses, including infant mortality, COPD, heart attacks, stroke, diabetes 2, cancers, depression, obesity, ME/CFS, MS, birth defects, etc. etc. and premature deaths in all age groups.

Prepared by Michael Ryan after discussion with Dr Dick van Steenis MBBS
30 June 2005

 
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