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(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)  Summertime, and the living is hardly easy for asthma sufferers in metro Atlanta. Ask Joelle Hodges.

"I think I'm allergic to Atlanta," said the 30-year-old Kennesaw resident. Last year, she experienced cold symptoms that lingered for months before she was diagnosed with asthma. Moving to the city three years earlier didn't help .

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, a nonprofit that ranks asthma capitals annually based on factors such as higher-than-average pollen levels, air pollution and lack of smoke-free laws.

Not only do asthmatics such as Hodges feel the effects in their lungs, but also their pocketbooks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently discontinued the manufacture and sale of albuterol (a quick-acting drug that opens airways) asthma inhalers that contain chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Chemicals in the inhalers damage the Earth's ozone layer, and the FDA wants them replaced with environmentally friendly HFA (hydrofluoroalkane) inhalers by Dec. 31. The new inhalers cost $45 to $65, and they won't be available in generic form for years.

"It's very frustrating," said Hodges, who felt an immediate pinch when her albuterol jumped from $5 to $30. She takes five medications to control asthma symptoms and averages more than $120 a month in prescriptions. "I feel like the asthma and the medications have taken over my life," she said.

Hodges is not alone. One in three asthma patients uses a rescue inhaler at least daily, and 73 percent use a rescue inhaler at least once a month, according to an AAFA survey.

Since there is no cure for the disease, medications are the primary means to manage asthma symptoms such as chronic coughing, wheezing after activity and chest tightness. With proper treatment and avoidance of triggers such as pollen, poor air quality, dust and stress, the nation's 20 million children and adult asthma sufferers can lead normal lives.

But that's hard to do when you live in one of the nation's asthma capitals.

Two types of air pollution are especially dangerous to breathe: ozone (smog) and particle pollution (soot). Atlanta has plenty of both. Ozone is an invisible gas that is typically formed when sunlight reacts to vapors emitted when fuel is burned by cars and trucks, factories, power plants and other sources. It usually peaks from May through October, when temperatures are highest and sunlight is strongest.

Also, prevailing wind patterns blow emissions from coal-burning electrical power plants in North Georgia toward the city, and the plants pollute the metropolitan area with particulate matter that can worsen respiratory disorders, as well as trigger heart attacks, strokes, irregular heartbeats, lung cancer and premature births.

While smog causes inflammation in everyone, people with breathing problems feel the effects more severely. Extreme weather changes and high temperatures accelerate the reactions, said Cherry Wongtrakool, a pulmonologist at Emory University Hospital.

No wonder, then, that as the heat rises and that familiar brown cloud of smog settles over metro Atlanta, more adults and children wind up in emergency rooms gasping for air, according to researchers at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health who are studying air quality and health.

Every city has a variety of risk factors, so you can move, but you cannot hide from asthma, experts agree. The best defense is a good management plan that begins with early diagnosis.

"People are living with stuffy lungs just like they're living with stuffy noses," said Ann-Marie Brooks, medical director of the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Asthma Center.

Brooks said that asthma remains largely underdiagnosed because people ignore the symptoms. If a person becomes short of breath each time he walks more than five minutes, he tends to stop walking more than five minutes instead of telling his doctor, she said. Over time, symptoms left untreated diminish lung capacity and decrease quality of health.

"You're a walking time bomb," Brooks said of people unaware of their decreased lung function. "At any moment, your airways can close down on you, and if you don't have the appropriate medication, you can die."

About 120 deaths occur in Georgia each year from asthma.

Virginia-Highland resident Lisa Waller, 30, learned to control her asthma during childhood (she was diagnosed at age 6) and monitors air quality indexes and adjusts her activities to avoid irritants such as pollens, poor air quality, high humidity and viral colds.

"You get better over time understanding your symptoms and your triggers," Waller said.



Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Author: VIKKI CONWELL