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As members of the Leadership Board for the American Lung Association in Kentucky, we are joining together – a scientist and an asthmatic mother of two young adults – in asking communities all across Kentucky to join us in urging Congress to pass the Build Back Better Act. The bill includes policies that will improve air quality, reduce tobacco and e-cigarette use and improve access to quality and affordable healthcare for all Americans.
As our community and world emerge from the COVID-19 historic pandemic, we have an opportunity to hit the reset button on many social and economic issues that many of us appreciate differently now. While elected officials work to Build Back Better, we’d like to make sure we focus on making choices that won’t leave us gasping either figuratively or literally.
Out of the many benefits of the Build Back Better Act, we are most passionate about the quality of the air we breathe, both outdoors and indoors.
As a mother with asthma, lung health has always been important to our family. Many of my kids’ friends in high school and college are easily addicted to e-cigarettes due to the flavorful taste and the misconception that these products are safer and have less nicotine than a pack of cigarettes.
Little do they know that e-cigarettes are more addictive and that one pod can contain as much nicotine as a whole pack of regular cigarettes. This is an epidemic with students smoking several pods a day. What’s even scarier is that we do not know what the true long-term implications are going to be for their lungs.
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In addition, our community is already dealing with the health impacts of decades of energy choices and industrial practices that considered pollution the cost of progress. Build Back Better is the best opportunity for Congress to pass bold climate policies that will reduce emissions and improve air quality, benefiting health and the economy right now and into the future.
In the last decade, Louisville embarked on an ambitious project called AIRLouisville which invited 1,400 asthmatic residents of our region to carry a “smart” inhaler so that we might better see where and when asthma attacks were concentrated. The project clearly revealed that, in specific locations, air pollution was a significant factor in the asthma attacks they experienced. We know this is a preventable health risk and we can leverage these new federal investments to improve health today here and across the country.
Likewise, the quality of the air we breathe indoors is critical to lung health. The average adult takes 25,000 breaths per day, and 90% of those breaths are taken indoors. Yet, we are dealing with a youth vaping epidemic locally and across the nation, threatening to addict a whole new generation to nicotine. By including an e-cigarette tax, we can help reduce youth vaping use and protect our kids and young adults from a future of addiction and lung diseases.
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We must use this time to reset our course of action here in our local community and around the country. We share the air, and we know how precious that air is. Please join us in advocating for a healthier Kentucky.
We are urging Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and all of our members of Congress from Kentucky to support the Build Back Better Act, and specifically the inclusion of 10-year clean energy tax credits, policies to expand access to quality and affordable health care and increased taxes on e-cigarettes.
Tiffany Cardwell, who is an asthmatic mother of two young adults has more than twenty-five years of experience in domestic and international Human Resources.
Ted Smith is an Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and serves as Director of the Center for Healthy Air Water and Soil at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute.