Brett Perkison suffers from asthma. It’s mild, but it’s part of his life. A physician who practices in suburban Houston, Perkison said that when he goes for a run at the end of the day, when streets and freeways jam with commuters hurrying home and tens of thousands of internal combustion engines rev up in unison, expelling tiny particles and other air pollutants, “I don’t do very well.”
He hears the same from his patients. And he heard the same during a recent study he led with other researchers of 200 African Americans, a group, with Hispanics, who suffer a disproportionately high prevalence of asthma. The more severe their symptoms, the more air pollution had affected their lives.
Perkison heard them express frustration, isolation, depression, anxiety. Some, he said, don’t even bother going out at rush hour. They can’t. Others said that dirty air forces them to stay home, which makes working regularly difficult—which makes affording rent, groceries, and other necessities difficult, too, let alone the cost of health insurance or an ambulance ride to the emergency room.
