May is National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month and on a hike at Harrison Hollow a group of high school students, people with asthma and the Idaho Clinicians for Climate Health all had climate change on their mind.
None of us enjoy that time later in summer when the wildfires rage and smoke sits in the Treasure Valley degrading air quality, but it has a really big impact on people with asthma.
"It just makes it harder to breathe, it makes it easier to go into an asthma attack where I’m wheezing and it also makes it harder to get outside," said Anne Ekedahl, a high school student with asthma. "I have a steroid inhaler and I have a rescue inhaler."
Meter dose inhalers that have been around for a long time they use a propellant to deliver medicine, recently it has been found that each inhaler has carbon emissions equivalent of driving a car 175 miles.
Dr. Ethan Simms, the Medical Director of Sustainability at St. Luke's has been looking into a new dry powder inhaler that has been used in Europe.
"There is a global initiative for asthma, the GINAprotocol, that shows this is the recommended way we treat asthma," said Simms. "It’s just not approved by the FDA, I didn’t know about it until six months ago, I didn’t know this was a problem."
Simms told us the dry powder inhalers work just as good or even better than the old inhalers, but since the dry powder inhalers don't have a propellant they produce 98 percent fewer carbon emissions.
"So we are not generating as many admissions, we are not driving that climate change, which is in turn driving the wildfires, which is driving our poor asthma and air quality," Simms. "During wildfires we see more patients in the ER that are sick with an asthma and emphysema."
The Idaho Clinicians for Climate Health are trying to raise awareness to help people with asthma while also reducing carbon emissions and they think this could be a solution.
"I’m glad there are people who care about it," said Ekedahl, who participates in nordic skiing, but has a difficult time training during the summer wildfire months with the rest of her teammates at Boise High.
Ekedahl also told us inhalers are expensive averaging around $200, so insurance is a problem with the dry powder inhalers being so new.
That is why a group of people came together at Harrison Hollow to raise awareness about asthma and go for a walk.
