Home may be where the heart is, but it is also where your child’s asthma attacks could be triggered. Dust mites, cockroaches, pollens, animal dander, and molds may sound like something from a horror movie, but the truth is they are found in all homes even yours. This certainly doesn’t mean you’re a poor housekeeper. But, there are steps you can consider to get many of these microscopic organisms and other asthma-provoking allergens out of your house and away from your child.

Tiny organisms and particles that can trigger asthma symptoms are found everywhere. While you’ll never be able to totally eradicate them, you can find ways to substantially decrease their numbers within each room of your home.

But before you take aim, check with your child’s health care provider to see exactly what triggers might be causing his asthma symptoms. These should be included on your child’s asthma action plan completed by his health care provider.

Eradicating these allergens, though, will involve some tough decisions such as whether to ban a pet from a room or a house. It may mean replacing carpeting, draperies, and upholstered furniture with materials and fabrics that are easier to clean and maintain. Or, it may mean changing the way items such as toys, clothes, or shoes are stored and maintained, or looking at how the air is cleaned and humidified in your house.

These are issues that you and your child will need to discuss so you can come to an understanding of what the culprits are and how they should be addressed. It also will take multiple efforts throughout your home generally on a room-by-room basis to get effective results. Not all results will be seen immediately for example, it can take weeks to months for pet dander to be minimized in a house despite your best efforts.

These allergens can be found just about everywhere in your home. And, while you can’t see them with the naked eye, they are there often hidden in the dust. The National Institute of Environ- mental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a part of NIH, describes house dust as a component of who you are not just dirt but a mixture of potentially allergenic materials, such as fibers, food particles, mold spores, pollens, dust mites, plant and insect parts, hair, animal fur and feathers, dried saliva and urine from pets, and flakes of human and animal skin. The allergens most likely to be considered asthma triggers within that dust come from:

• Cockroaches, which are considered to have the greatest impact on childhood asthma in many American cities. Cockroach allergens appear to come from several sources such as saliva, fecal material, secretions, shed skins, and dead bodies.
• Dust mites, or more specifically, the feces of dust mites, which are microscopic relatives of the spider and live on mattresses, bedding, upholstered furniture, carpets, and curtains. These tiny creatures feed on the flakes of skin that people and pets shed daily and they thrive in warm and humid environments.
• Pets and animals, which have allergens that are actually proteins secreted by oil glands and shed as dander, proteins in saliva that may stick to fur when animals lick themselves, and aerosolized urine from rodents and guinea pigs.
• Molds, which produce tiny spores and can be found almost anywhere.
• Endotoxins, which are chemicals produced by bacteria.

And beyond the dust are triggers in the air that also could make your child’s asthma worse such as secondhand smoke from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes wood smoke or particulate matter that gets in the air from fireplace or woodstove use, nitrogen dioxide, an odor less gas from improperly vented fuel-burning appliances that can irritate eyes, noses, and throats and may cause shortness of breath, and chemical irritants that are found in some products in your home such as cleaners, paints, adhesives, pesticides, cosmetics, or air fresheners.

For more information on how to treat bronchial asthma and protect your loved ones to suffer bronchial asthma again. Please go to The Asthma Relief Report.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Asthma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.