So for years the decline of air pollution has been associated with an increase in Asthma.

 

Idiots from the green left all the way to the White House, say more air pollution regulation will decrease asthma.

Now they conflate one target with another, calling carbon dioxide carbon pollution. Acting like reducing carbon dioxide emissions will reduce asthma.

LIES LIES LIES.

Bob Greene, my comrade here at JunkScience just put up a fine example of how stupid the fanatics can be–ignoring the evidence and suppressing the proper interpretation of the decline in air pollution/increase in asthma phenonmenon.

The news article discussed the research finding from a group at Johns Hopkins Med School.

Dunn notes are in perens.

Thanks for putting this up, Mr. Greene.

It is really important stuff to know.
Too-Clean Homes May Encourage Child Allergies, Asthma: Study
Exposure to a little dust, dander in infancy might prime tots’ immune systems, research finds

Too-Clean Homes May Encourage Child Allergies, Asthma: Study
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, June 6, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a home that’s too clean can leave a newborn child vulnerable to allergies and asthma later in life, a new study reports.

Infants are much less likely to suffer from allergies or wheezing if they are exposed to household bacteria and allergens from rodents, roaches and cats during their first year of life, the study found.

The results stunned researchers, who had been following up on earlier studies that found an increased risk of asthma among inner-city dwellers exposed to high levels of roach, mouse and pet droppings and allergens.

“What we found was somewhat surprising and somewhat contradictory to our original predictions,” said study co-author Dr. Robert Wood, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. “It turned out to be completely opposite — the more of those three allergens you were exposed to, the less likely you were to go on to have wheezing or allergy.”

(Dunn note: I have known about the hygiene theory of Asthma for many years, and an allergist at Johns Hopkins is “stunned” to find out this basic immunological phenomenon? Desensitization is the bedrock of allergist treatment and he didn’t know what???)

About 41 percent of allergy-free and wheeze-free children in the study grew up in homes that were rich with allergens and bacteria. By contrast, only 8 percent of children who suffered from both allergy and wheezing had been exposed to these substances in their first year of life.

The study was published June 6 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The findings support the “hygiene hypothesis,” which holds that children in overly clean houses are more apt to suffer allergies because their bodies don’t have the opportunity to develop appropriate responses to allergens, said Dr. Todd Mahr, an allergist-immunologist in La Crosse, Wis., and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Allergy & Immunology.

Prior research has shown that children who grow up on farms have lower allergy and asthma rates, possibly due to their regular exposure to bacteria and microbes, the researchers noted in background material.

(Dunn note: another well known thing. Now do you think the green machine thugs are going to pick up on this if it jeopardizes their case against air pollution?)

“The environment appears to play a role, and if you have too clean of an environment the child’s immune system is not going to be stimulated,” Mahr explained.

As many as half of all 3-year-olds in the United States suffer from wheezing illnesses, and recurrent wheezing and allergies are considered a risk factor for asthma in later life, researchers said. According to the American Lung Association, asthma remains one of the most common pediatric illnesses, affecting about 7 million American children.

The new study involved 467 inner-city newborns from Baltimore, Boston, New York City and St. Louis. Doctors enrolled the babies in the study while they were still in the womb, and have been tracking their health since birth, Wood said.

Investigators visited the infants’ homes to measure the levels and types of allergens. They also collected dust in about a quarter of the homes and analyzed its bacterial content.

They found that infants who grew up in homes with mouse and cat dander and cockroach droppings in the first year of life had lower rates of wheezing at age 3, compared with children not exposed to the allergens.

Wheezing was three times as common among children who grew up without exposure to such allergens, affecting 51 percent of children in “clean” homes compared with 17 percent of children who spent their first year of life in houses where all three allergens were present.

Household bacteria also played a role, and infants in homes with a greater variety of bacteria were less likely to develop allergies and wheezing by age 3.

Children free of wheezing and allergies at age 3 had grown up with the highest levels of household allergens and were the most likely to live in houses with the richest array of bacterial species, researchers found.

(Dunn note: When do I hear an apology from those who have made all these false claims about asthma. Asthma is an allergic disease air pollution is not the cause of asthma. Robert Phalen PhD air pollution specialist at UC Irvine, says that we need dirtier air to reduce asthma, not cleaner. I agree.)

“The combination of both — having the allergen exposure and the bacterial exposure — appeared to be the most protective,” Wood said.

Both Wood and Mahr cautioned that these findings need to be verified, and that parents shouldn’t make any household decisions based on them.

For example, parents shouldn’t adopt a dog or cat assuming that its presence will help immunize their kids against allergies and asthma, Wood said. At the same time, they shouldn’t ditch their family pet, either.

“We would not take any of this as information we could use to give advice,” Wood said. “Please don’t get an intentional cockroach infestation in your house. There’s no reason to think that would help.”

There are a number of other factors that could influence the likelihood that an inner-city kid will develop asthma, including tobacco smoke, high levels of household stress, or even exposure to the same sort of potentially beneficial allergens too late in life, past their first birthday, Wood said.

“This is by no means a simple story,” he said. “There could be a lot of factors going on.”

(Dunn note: they are pretending like this is realy new and revolutionary stuff. This is old news.)

Mahr said the findings could someday lead to treatments that would help infants build up resistance to allergies. “I can see someone coming up with a spray. You’d spray the crib that the kid sleeps in every so often, and let the kid crawl around in it,” he said.

(Dunn note: That’s what allergists do, they desensitize people–why is he, why is this group being so hesitant about something well known in the immunology and allergy community. Why are you acting like this is revolutionary talk?)
More information

Find out more about indoor allergens at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

SOURCES: Robert Wood, M.D., chief, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center; Todd Mahr, M.D., allergist-immunologist, La Crosse, Wis., and chair, American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Allergy & Immunology; June 6, 2014, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology