The increase in asthma tracks pretty closely with the reductions in public smoking. Perhaps environmental smoke was suppressing an underlying tendency toward asthma.

I am a congenital asthmatic, now having suffered this menace for several decades. It will only get worse...my doctor in response to irritants I read about for folks who had lived in the Ohio/Mississippi River Valleys, now tells me new strains, are appearing in Arizona, in the deep South, and near Seattle. Who will address these new challenges?

When are they going to connect the use of ethanol in gasoline to the increase in the COPD's? With an 80%  increase in COPD's since 1988 it stands to reason that the tons of acetlhyde being discharged into the atmosphere is the cause. My COPD began when ethanol was added to the gasoline in Arizona. Of course the drug companies are making billions of the drugs for COPD's, so they are not about to let the cause be dealt with. The EPA admitted when ethanol was added, there would be a considerable increase in COPD's!!! This is all thanks to the Clean Air Act!!!!

It's all the coal burning.

Let's see... between cigarettes, industrial toxins we pump into the air, all the poisons used by our government for various things, the junk sprayed all over the food we eat, bad building materials, etc., I can't see how ANY of us DON'T have some form of respiratory disease! It's going to get a lot worse, with the help of your government who will never give you any real help, or stop these things from happening. They'll kill us all one day with this #*@&!.