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Transcript: Children and Asthma -- Children in Rural Communities: Iowa Children's Center
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TIME: 5:00
DR. JOEL KLINE: Here at the University of Iowa, we have
the Childhood Asthma Center, and one of the important studies that I’m
involved in is looking at some of the reasons why we think children today are
getting more asthma than they were a decade ago or 25 years ago.
And we’re seeing a 50 percent increase over 25 years, which is really not
possible from a genetic explanation, so it’s probably an environmental
cause for the increased amount of asthma.
DR. GARY HUNNINGHAKE: Our studies are indicating that as many as a fifth,
maybe even as high as a fourth, of the children in the rural communities in Iowa
may have asthma, and in over half of the cases, we are estimating that asthma
is in the moderate to severe category. The primary problem is exposure to grain
dust and endotoxin that contaminates a lot of grain and get into the air.
So, if you travel in the rural communities, you don’t see smog like you
see in Los Angeles, but you can see clouds of dust in the air, and these can
be very irritating to the air tubes of the lung for the children with asthma.
DR. JAMES MERCHANT: Kiacut County is a small southeastern Iowa county,
typically rural, typically agricultural, and we have been studying this county
for about six years.
The first round of 1000 families revealed something surprising to us, which
was a rather high rate of childhood asthma.
We’re also looking at what exposures the kids have on the farm. There are
a number of organo-phosphate pesticides that have been identified as causes of
asthma.
A rite of passage in Iowa and every other rural community in America is
that, uh, children begin to work at a very young age, so they’re out there in
the barn, around animals, getting exposed to farm chemicals, ammonia, hydrogen
sulfide that arises from animal manure. In Iowa, there’s a lot of livestock
raised in confinement, so-called concentrated animal feeding operations, or "CAFOs."
We have the organic dusts themselves, which is common to agriculture. The
animals are fed grain, primarily corn and soybeans.
And then the detergents that are used to clean these units cause asthma.
Then there’s the whole area of endotoxins that live in the guts of the animals
and they get aerosolized in these livestock facilities.
KLINE: Endotoxin is the product of certain kinds of bacteria, and it’s
extremely hardy; it stays around for years or decades. It’s difficult to
get rid of even in the laboratory situation and we’ve done studies here
showing that endotoxin inhalation can cause bronchospasm, or narrowing of the
airways, after you inhale it, even in nonasthmatic, normal individuals.
MERCHANT: Endotoxin is tracked into the homes by farmers. They typically
wear their work clothes and their work boots into the homes.
DR. ELIZABETH CHRISCHILLES: About 30 percent of the families in the parent
study live on farms. We are really focusing our efforts to improve the child’s
indoor environment, realizing that a lot of exposures out on the farm out in
the community get tracked into the home.
WOMAN #1: We take our shoes off when we walk in the house so it doesn’t
track dirt through the carpets to keep the dust down.
CHRISCHILLES: We meet with the family in their home; we walk around with
a checklist identifying particular issues that might be, uh, a problem for a
child with asthma.
RESEARCHER: Hi. Let’s see where the heavy traffic area is and where
I can get my sweeper in.
(TITLE: kqed.org/baywindow – Tips for cleaning your home)
RESEARCHER: I’ll be doing the main sample area right here, one square meter.
What’s in here is could be anything that’s on their feet -- lint
from the carpet, tracked in dirt -- whatever they bring in from the outside is
on the floor in here. So we’ll go down here and check out the furnace.
CHRISCHILLES: We have several families who have wood-burning furnaces.
Now, smoke is a direct irritant to any child with asthma.
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