40% Of New York's 9,400 Homeless Children Have Asthma - Reuters

[hatrack]

CHICAGO - "Roughly two out of five homeless children in New York City have asthma and some go undiagnosed and untreated, researchers said yesterday.

The 40 percent rate of asthma among the estimated 9,400 children who are homeless at any one time in the nation's largest city is six times the U.S. rate, which has been escalating in recent decades for reasons that are unclear, the researchers said.

Some say asthma rates are climbing because the respiratory illness is diagnosed more often; others blame exposure to pollutants, worsening allergies, and overuse of antibiotics.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 16 million or about 7.5 percent of Americans reported having asthma in 2002, up 4 percent from the year before. In 1980, using different criteria, the health agency said the incidence was 3 percent. Black and Latino children have much higher rates of asthma than whites, and children from poorer backgrounds are also more susceptible to the lung ailment."

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24074/story.htm

[Snow]

1. *snort!* No, the reason those kids seem to have more is that

someone actually went in & did a decent survey, using proper epidemiologic techniques. Whereas the rest of the kids in the country get these poor samples, flaky surveys, selection bias and weird defintions of the disease so it's impossible to tell what's going on. From surveys I've done, I'd put diagnosed asthma in 6th graders at around 10-15%, and undiagnosed at around 15-20%. So a fourth to a third of kids age 12 or so have asthma.