Smoking magnifies asthma symptoms. Half the kids in the class had someone in the house who smokes. But, she continues, smoking is down from past decades. Leon and Mendez, doctors and researchers, just don't know what has caused the area's asthma explosion. But even without these environmental factors, it most likely would have happened.
Demographics dictate it.
Asthma hospitalizations worse for minorities Asthma is more common among minorities than Anglos, national statistics show. It is also more severe, leading to more hospitalizations and more disabilities. In Maricopa County, Black kids proportionately were hospitalized for asthma four times more than all other ethnic groups in 1998. Seventy-eight percent of southeast Phoenix is minority. Researchers suspect these higher hospitalization rates are due to the high rate of minorities living in poverty, since low-income housing often is leaky, with poor ventilation and musty carpets that foster molds and dust mites.