I hate having asthma, especially now that it has worsened as I’ve grown older.
My doctor prescribed me an inhaler when I was just six years old, but I rarely used it.
If I caught a cold or got sick with the flu, I’d reach for my inhaler to improve my lung capacity and get my breathing under control. But if I was otherwise healthy, I had little trouble keeping up with my classmates in P.E. classes or in afterschool sports programs. When I reached college, I started noticing an uptick in my allergy symptoms and asthmatic reactions. I had an asthma attack after getting exposed to a heavy cleaning agent that the school’s staff was using to sanitize the floors in the residence halls. I stayed in a hotel on the school’s dime for a week while the chemical odor dispersed. Now that I have a family of my own, I am having increased issues with my asthma. I use my inhaler at least once a day, and now I have two different nasal sprays that I administer daily. A lot of airborne lung irritants can originate from inside air conditioners that haven’t been cleaned in long stretches of time, especially those that are left to grow microbial buildup. UV lights can be installed in air handlers and have two primary purposes. First, they sanitize much of the air that passes through the ventilation system, but most importantly they prevent mold growth on the evaporator coil. By constantly exposing the coil to the intense UV light, the conditions become less than ideal for any organic growth, even bacterial.