BREATHE-ZY

SEATTLE - "There's nothing like some good ol' fresh air!" You say it. We say it. Everybody says it. Maybe because we're just so starved for it.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Human Activity Pattern Survey (https://indoor.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-47713.pdf), the typical American spends no more than 8 percent - or less than two hours a day - of their time outdoors. The rest of the time we're cooped up in buildings and cars where oftentimes the closest we get to fresh air is an air freshener.

And most of the time spent indoors - just under 113 hours each week - is at home where, on average, will breathe more than 5.6 million times a year. All of which means that maybe we ought to wonder, even worry, about what it is we're actually breathing when we're home sweet home.

It's certainly something on the mind of the Seattle Housing Authority. In collaboration with the University of Washington School of Public Health, Neighborhood House, Public Health Seattle and King County and the American Lung Association of Washington, in 2005 it launched what ultimately would be known as the Breathe Easy initiative in High Point, a mixed-income neighborhood in Seattle that the Authority, in part with funding from HUD's HOPE VI public housing revitalization program, had built to replace old, dilapidated public housing and, more generally, to revitalize a distressed neighborhood.

Concerned about "the near epidemic of childhood and adult asthma," the Authority and its partners built 60 Breathe Easy homes to test ways the different building materials and features might improve indoor air quality. All the homes it built at High Point (www.seattlehousing.org/redevelopment/high-point/breathe-easy/) have filtered air intakes, house fans, vinyl flooring in kitchens and bathrooms, airtight drywall, low-volatile paint and sealed cabinetry to reduce emissions. But Breathe Easy homes also have Positive press ventilation, a HERA filter, low or no off-gas trim, millwork and cabinetry, linoleum floors in living areas and construction sequencing that allowed dry-outs and other protections to reduce mold, dust and other allergens. Residents also received home visits by prevention specialists both before and after occupancy and, were required to follow certain rules - no smoking, no pets, and a restriction on using certain cleaning agents.

Extra features, of course, mean extra construction costs, "from $5,000 to $7,000" for a Breathe Easy home, a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Public Health (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000722/) reported, "adding about 5 percent" to construction costs. They would conclude, however, that those "modest costs" were easily outweighed by the benefits Breathe Easy residents received.

For example, the asthma-symptom-free days of Breathe Easy residents "increased from a mean of 7.6 per 2 weeks in their old home to 12.4 after 1 year" in a Breathe Easy unit. The proportion of residents requiring an "urgent" asthma-related clinical visit within the prior three months fell from 62 to 21 percent.

Ditto, said the authors, for secondary effects. "Participants with well-controlled asthma increased; the proportions with rescue medication use, activity limitations, symptom nights in the previous 2 weeks, and asthma attacks in the previous 3 months" all decreased. "Considering the potential savings in asthma care costs and missed work and school days, these costs could be recouped over a relatively short time."

The Seattle Housing Authority certainly found the results compelling. So much so that when it broke ground, with help from $30 million in HUD Choice Neighborhoods grants, in 2013 on the revitalization of the Yesler Terrace neighborhood near the International District in downtown it said all 861 units of affordable housing it planned would be Breathe Easy units. The first 201 - at Raven Terrace and Kebero Court already are occupied.

Which, in turn, has caught the attention of the National Environmental Health Association which, at its national conference in San Antonio, presented the Seattle Housing Authority with a 2016 HUD Secretary's Healthy Housing Award (www.huduser.gov/portal/about/healthyHomesAward-2016-1.html).

In his remarks at the conference, HUD Secretary Julián Castro told a story about DeWayne Young, a young man living in Baltimore who'd long suffered asthma, a situation made much worse by "mold and allergens found in his home." One year it was so bad that, the Secretary noted, his mother had rushed him to the emergency rooms eight times and, by year's end, he'd spent "the equivalent of three full weeks in the emergency room or in the doctor's office."

Fortunately, like the Seattle Housing Authority, Baltimore had a Green and Healthy Homes initiative which visited the family in their home, identified the environmental factors aggravating his condition and repaired or removed them. The following year, the Secretary was pleased to report, DeWayne had a perfect attendance record in school.

"Too many children in America have enough obstacles to overcome," the Secretary observed. "Kids that see their opportunities in life limited by the color of their skin, or by the ZIP code where they grow up. They shouldn't also have to come home and worry," the Secretary concluded, "about the air that they breathe."

Thanks to the work of the Seattle Housing Authority and its partners, kids at Yesler Terrace won't have to. Would that we were all so fortunate.

###