Worst Nightmare for Asthmatics: Sulfur Dioxide

According to the World Health Organization, over 250 million people in the world suffer from asthma. Among other things, asthmatics are especially sensitive to sulfur dioxide in the air. Sulfur dioxide is released into the air during a variety of events: when fossil fuel is burned, metal is extracted from ores, and gasoline is extracted from oil. Over the past 35 years, federal emissions regulations have been able to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air by over 80%. However, even the smallest amount of sulfur dioxide can cause effects towards asthmatics. This means that asthmatics can experience lung irritation and difficulty breathing without even noticing the sulfur dioxide. More research is underway to figure out why asthmatics can’t make interleukin-10(a protein that prevents the inflammatory process).

Not many solutions are presented to fix this problem. However, the most evident solution would be to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air by even more. This would require making stricter federal regulations. This would hopefully reduce the amount of asthmatics affected by the sulfur dioxide.

The biggest barrier to this solution of reducing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air is time and participation. First, time would be a major problem because it would take a long time to create stricter federal regulations. Next, participation would be a barrier because it would be almost impossible to have people reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide created without it dramatically changing their lifestyle. I believe this is a big problem for not only the US, but also the whole world. A quarter of a billion people in the world are affected by the sulfur dioxide. This is a tremendous group of people that should be helped. However, with the barriers, it might be almost impossible to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide more than it already has been reduced.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716180916.htm