Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7 of the Special Report.

EAST ST LOUIS, Ill – On a clear spring day, the four-year-olds laughed as they ran out on the playground at the start of morning recess. Within minutes, one boy stopped, a terrified look on his face. Brenda Crisp and her staff immediately realized what was happening: Asthma attack.

“He escalated from zero symptoms to a severe attack in no time at all,” said Crisp, director of the Uni-Pres Kindercottage daycare center. “It came out of the clear blue.”

An ambulance rushed the boy to the hospital, where it took him two days to recover. Two years later, he still suffers unexpected asthma attacks and must take his nebulizer, a device that delivers a dose of corticosteroids and oxygen, wherever he goes.

This wasn’t the first — or the last — near-deadly attack Crisp and her staff have witnessed at the daycare center. When it comes to asthma, the children of their community are at high risk.

Nearly all are African American and living in poverty. Incinerators, metal producers, power plants, chemical manufacturers and other industries ring the city. Exhaust from cars and trucks on nearby highways blankets the area, as well.

This socioeconomic profile and long history of environmental hazards have left East St. Louis with what experts suspect is one of the highest asthma rates in the nation.

Seven million American children -- nearly one out of every ten -- have asthma, and the rate has been climbing for the past few decades, reaching epidemic proportions. For black children, it’s even worse -- one out of every six -- and the reported rate has risen 50 percent between 2001 and 2010, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are seeing higher asthma numbers in emergency departments, and we’re realizing it's on the rise,” said Anna Hardy, a public health nurse at the East Side Health District in East St. Louis.

What is it about this city – and other poor, African American cities across the nation -- that leaves children with a disproportionate burden of respiratory disease? Is it the factories? The traffic exhaust? The substandard housing? For two decades, medical experts have struggled to unravel the mysterious connections between inner-city life and asthma, and while they have reached no conclusions yet, they suspect they know the answer: All of the above.

Crippling poverty

Located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Mo., East St. Louis is on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak.

Of its 27,000 residents, 15 percent are unemployed, almost 44 percent are below the poverty line and the median family income is around $22,000, according to census reports. Its violent crime and murder rates are consistently among the nation’s highest. Eighty-two percent of East St. Louis children depend on food stamps, 28 percent of births are to teen mothers and 22 percent of mothers receive no or inadequate prenatal care, according to the nonprofit group Vision for Children at Risk.

Housing in the city ranges from, at best, small homes that often house multiple families to crowded, low-income apartment complexes. Some people live in burned-out buildings and tents.

5 Comments

1. 1. marclevesque 06:38 PM 6/20/12

   "People of color"
   
   People of color: Nonwhite minority group members, but reflects recent demographic realities of the United States. The phrase people of color refers to groups such as African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans and is often preferred over the phrase ethnic minority because these groups are, in many schools and communities, the majority rather than the minority.
   From: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072486694/student_view0/glossary.html
   
   "failed cultures"
   
   How do you define "failed culture"

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2. 2. marclevesque in reply to marclevesque 06:39 PM 6/20/12

   Previous comment in responce to @outsidethebox

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3. 3. outsidethebox 09:32 PM 6/20/12

   A failed culture is one that whose members are not competitive in the world primarily because they belong to that culture.

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4. 4. marclevesque 07:41 PM 6/21/12

   "A failed culture is one that whose members are not competitive in the world primarily because they belong to that culture."
   
   I feel the modifiers "failed" and "not competitive" are distracting, and the relation between failure/success, competitiveness, and cultural specifics is left open.
   
   Maybe we can talk about a culture's overall socio-economic competitiveness at a particular point in time, in a particular environment, and in the context of a particular economic theory or ideology, but I'm not sure what for --and cultures have so much in common.
   
   Failed one day, winner the next, and vice versa.
   
   

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5. 5. bucketofsquid 09:33 AM 6/28/12

   It seems to me that the state govt. would be ahead of the game by making birth control free to low income families, condemn any substandard buildings and tear them down, offer job training and free relocation to areas with more jobs. That is usually cheaper than multiple visits to emergency care by 12% of your children.

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