Healthy homes are good medicine for asthma suffers

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Living in a healthily designed and environmentally friendly home may reduce asthmatic children’s suffering as much as or even more than medicine. This is the key finding of a three-year study in which Tim Takaro, an associate professor in health sciences at Simon Fraser University, was the lead investigator.

Takaro collaborated with researchers from several Seattle area agencies to study how 35 environmentally friendly homes in a new 1600 unit housing development in West Seattle affected the health of families with asthmatic children.

Takaro monitored the health of the children and their parents in the environmentally friendly, low-income family homes, known as Breathe Easy Homes, for a year. They compared those results with the same measures of the families’ health the year previously when they were living in older homes. That testing monitored the benefits of working with a community health worker to implement a proven strategy for reducing asthma triggers.

Takaro found that asthmatic children in homes designed to reduce their exposure to triggers had 70 percent more symptom-free days during a two-week period than they did in their previous homes.

There was also a 300 percent reduction in the children’s need for urgent clinical care, such as unscheduled visits to the doctor to get medicine or trips to emergency. The parents of asthmatic sufferers also had significantly improved quality of life in the new homes.

“The results are very important, especially when you consider that thousands of asthmatics live in unhealthy housing,” notes Takaro, a physician and an expert on the effects environmental hazards on human health.

He adds: “These are substantial improvements in health, as good or better than those from any medications. They add to the arsenal of effective interventions in childhood asthma. Home design, building materials, construction practices and code can be improved to help kids with asthma.”

Researchers from 18 partner groups in the Seattle area, including King County Housing Authority and Puget Sound Neighborhood Health Centre, worked with Takaro on this study. The United States Housing and Urban Development department funded the project.

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Backgrounder: Healthy homes are good medicine for asthma suffers

Key results of the study

• During a two-week period, asthmatic children enjoyed 12.4 symptom free days in the Breathe Easy Homes compared to 7.1 days in the refurbished old homes.

• The number of urgent clinical visits over a year declined from 60 days in the old homes to 20.6 in the environmentally friendly new ones.

• The average number of asthma triggers (i.e., rodents, roaches, pets, mold and moisture) dropped from 1.4 to .03, a significant difference.

• Parents’ quality of life improved significantly according to the Juniper Scale commonly used in clinical asthma research. There were fewer sleepless nights, missed school and work days, and frantic visits to emergency rooms and clinics.

• Control of moisture and allergen reservoirs (minimal carpeting)

• Use of low emission materials in construction. Particle board and finishes often have volatile organic compounds that can trigger asthma

• Careful construction practices to avoid building with most materials

• For $5,000 to 7,000, modest improvements in housing design, materials and construction in low-income family housing can have a dramatic effect on asthma triggers, symptoms and exacerbations. They can also modestly improve the parents’ quality of life.

• The 1600-unit mixed-income housing project called High Point, which includes the 35 Breathe Easy Homes, is one of only five winners of the 2007 Urban Land Institute Global Award for Excellence. The winners were selected from hundreds of candidates worldwide. The award recognizes High Point as an international model of sustainable mixed-income living.