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Asthma
"There's research showing oil refineries do produce toxic gases, which can affect your breathing and create problems like asthma."
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to this Commentary!
By Donnell Parker
As a little kid, I couldn't play as hard as everybody else. Like when we played basketball, I'd be exhausted almost as soon as we started. And I'm not the only one in my neighborhood. All the time, I see little kids run around for about five minutes, and their breathing is like they just finished a marathon. Kids and also adults are lugging around asthma pumps like old men with oxygen tanks.
I always thought my asthma came from cigarette smoking in my household. My mom would smoke all the time, sitting on the couch, watching TV. And tobacco smoke is linked with asthma attacks. But now, I'm wondering if my asthma might also be connected to the oil refineries near my house. At one point, my family lived as close as you could to A refinery-but it's not like you could see the buildings or anything. You wouldn't even know they were there. And people didn't talk much about them either. But there's research showing oil refineries do produce toxic gases, which can affect your breathing and create problems like asthma.
Now that I'm learning about these refineries, I feel like one of The Oblongs or something. That's a cartoon about a family living downstream from an industrial waste site, which messes them all up. For example, the father has no arms and legs, and the mother's bald headed. I may have all my hair and limbs, but i'm wondering if these refineries might be mutating my lungs.
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