A major cause of asthma problems is close proximity to traffic. If you carry the genes for asthma and live next to a highway or busy street, you're at risk.
View a recent article on this subject in the Chicago Tribune.
I know this from personal experience, although I have been following the research on asthma in Discover and several other publications.
Our old home was less than twenty feet away from a major artery in town, where there was constant traffic. Asthma became such a problem that my boyfriend had difficulty sleeping at night and required prescription inhalers such as albuterol, which is not without side effects.
Our new home was located just a mile away, but on a site that is over a hundred feet removed from traffic. It made a huge difference. When we moved, my boyfriend's asthma problem disappeared. Problem solved.
This points to yet another reason that U.S. auto manufacturers should focus upon producing clean/green cars that are the most fuel-efficient in the world. This will reduce the health problems caused by car exhaust.
Of course, the car manufacturers should have been doing the right thing years ago instead of designing new monster trucks and SUVs with low fuel economy standards. If they had done the right thing, they would not now be in the situation that they are in, begging Congress for money to stay afloat. But you can't ask a CEO to take five minutes out of his busy day to think about such a thing as ethics. He's too busy following the latest gyrations of the stock market and devising new ways to downsize his workers.
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