[neverdem]

ping

[kaktuskid]

Maybe kids spend more time indoors in houses that, since the energy crisis of the 1970s, are efficiently sealed off from outside air, and so trap irritants like dust mites, cockroach droppings and pet dander.

BINGO!

[Grampa Dave]

Was it Kerry who claimed that he had asthma years ago and backed down when Rush caught him in that lie?

[old and tired]

I'm not saying pollution has nothing to do with asthma, but I'll bet the following three things have as much to do with so many kids having asthma as anything else:

1. More kids survive today. The new asthma medicines are fantastic and great strides have been made treating premature infants. Twenty years ago, a lot of severe asthmatics would have died in infancy or from pneumonia as children.

2. City kids are told to stay inside and watch TV or play video games. Their mothers figure they'd rather have fat kids than pregnant, drop-out, drug addicted kids. It used to be if you lived in the city your mother would tell you to go outside. Those days are gone.

3. The improved medications result in more kids being diagnosed with asthma. Twenty or thirty years ago kids who wheezed occasionally when they got a cold were said to be prone to bronchitis - they had to stay in bed with the vaporizer going til they got better. The new drugs give these same types of kids much easier winters, but now they get the asthmatic label.