Air Health Our Health

As we enter wildfire season, I share an interview with Stacie Reveles of the Cystic Fibrosis Research Institute .  She is the mother of a child with a complex lung disease that makes navigating the reality of wildfires and a changing climate even more challenging. Listen as she shares her story and wisdom about how to live with the reality of increasing wildfires and how to protect and prepare you...

Allergies can be miserable, and like other threats in the air, can often be invisible but cause a great deal of misery! For this episode, Dr Sharmilee Nyenhuis from the University of Chicago teaches us about pollen, how it affects us, and how it is changing. Listen and learn!  Know your own allergies, and make a plan for that pollen season- avoiding peak pollen times outdoors, rinsing pollen off y...

When we gather indoors and exhale CO2, levels can rapidly rise and impair our cognitive function, even at levels that are pretty typical for indoor buildings in the US. But solutions are surprisingly cheap and easy! Today I'm joined by Dr. Georgia Lagoudas PhD, MIT grad and Senior Fellow and faculty at Brown University’s School of Public Health, where she brings extensive expertise in biosecur...

We all need to eat. We also all need to breathe clean air. Around the country and the world the practice of agricultural burning is used to remove crop residue. This can often be the most efficient or cost-effective from the perspective of the individual farmer, but can also affect the people living and working in the area.   Dr Laura C. Myers , M.D., M.P.H  is a lung and ICU doctor at Kaiser Perm...

We now have more information about how e-cigarettes can affect adolescents. It is tragic, because kids had really gotten the message that cigarettes are bad for you, but candy-flavored e-cigarettes seem safer and lure them in. Kids who start with e-cigs are more likely to become smokers, use other addictive substances, have depression and attempt suicide. I recorded a Breathe Easy podcast for the...

Happy Holidays! This episode is a short and sweet guide to those who want to give the gift of clean air this holiday season- a gift that keeps on giving! To Do- Go to AirHealthOurHealth.org/GiftGuide to share clean air gift ideas with friends and loved ones! To learn more about the health impacts of gas stoves, listen to The Fire Inside episode. To learn more about gas-powered lawn equipment, list...

Kids are our future and have the most to lose from the changing climate affecting our planet. However, they also have the most to gain from us taking action now to understand how climate change impacts the health of our children and what we can do. Today I am joined by two amazing pediatric lung doctors and mothers.  Dr Anne Coates is the mother of four and a pediatric pulmonologist in the Maine M...

Research can seem like something that happens far off, but doesn’t affect us on a daily basis. Nothing could be further from the truth! How does what we breathe cause disease? Can we intervene? If I have to choose, should I buy an air purifier or an air conditioner? How much does that help? What about if I have a family member with lung disease? Does it matter if I’m healthy? We need publicly fund...

I see the worst case scenarios as an ICU doctor- today's episode introduces you to someone whose fruity nicotine-containing e-cigarette landed her on something called ECMO. It is a scary story of ICU survivorship and also an incredible one of resilience. Petrea McKeithen is a young mother and ECMO survivor and has generously shared her story with the American Lung Association and now with you!...

Welcome to the last Air Health Our Health podcast of Season Five. This is a collaboration with the American Thoracic Society ’s Breathe Easy podcast, of which I am a new host.  We produce over 450 million tons of plastic each year, the majority of which accumulates in the environment- it is vital to understand how that impacts us. For today’s episode, I interview Dr Adam Soloff, PhD a researcher a...

Summer is coming, and with it rising temperatures. It is important to know how to stay safe in heat, and this is especially important for people who work outdoors. Today, I am joined by Dr. Maeve MacMurdo, an occupational and environmental pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic . We discuss how heat affects the body, how to recognize heat illness, and what we can do to help people stay safe in heat...

Natural disasters such as wildfires can provoke a great deal of anxiety about immediate and long term risk, so I wanted to have someone on whose job it is to think only of the worst case scenarios and how we can navigate them. Nobody better for the job than an ER doctor! For this episode, I talk to Mary C. Meyer, MD MPH , an emergency medicine physician with The Permanente Medical Group and an exp...

If you use healthcare or live on Planet Earth, you want a comprehensive ban on flavored tobacco products. This podcast is a helpful summary of all the issues wrapped up in flavored tobacco, e-cigarettes and the human, environmental and economic damages of the tobacco industry. Statewide and comprehensive flavored tobacco bans that include menthol, cigars, e-cigarettes and more are simple and poten...

Dr Anthony Gerber is a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician at National Jewish Health, where he conducts research on lung disease. He is also a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and National Jewish and has has served on the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission. He provides insight into actions we can take in our own communities. Look up who represents you at your cit...

Happy New Year from Air Health Our Health! I share a brief reflection on the difference between knowledge and wisdom as well as how to move forward in 2025. To Do-  Pick an area for clean air, climate or tobacco action in the next year Flavored e-cigs, Tobacco Pollution & More? Listen to Sierra Club episodes , Season Three episodes w/ Dr. Jaspers and Dr. Jordt , and Season Two Heartbreaking Tr...

Happy Holidays! Today I am joined by Katie Zakrzewski , who labels herself as a devout Catholic from a Polish family. Originally a self- described climate denier from a low-income and rural area,  she has gone on quite the journey and now works for Catholic Climate Covenant . This season of Advent seemed the perfect time to release a conversation with her. Over 80% of the people on this planet adh...

This episode may sound different than your regular Air Health Our Health podcast. It is the first episode recorded with a live audience. This was done at the American College of Chest Physicians Conference, also known as Chest.  I was delighted to be able to interview Dr. Mary Rice MD, MPH of Harvard University, a person who has incorporated combatting the effects of climate change deeply into her...

I first heard about burn pits from veterans when I was a pulmonary fellow at the Portland, VA. Our active duty military are often exposed to hazards when deployed, and the damage can be lifelong. Today I am joined by Captain Le Roy Torres and his wife Rosie Torres , the founders of of Burn Pits 360 . They share their experience and journey through its ups and downs, from Balad, Iraq to the emergen...

We are going back to school! We kick off Season Five today by talking to teens about tobacco pollution, smoking and e-cig use. Keshav Narang is an 18 y.o. High school senior and Finn Ceja is a 19 year old college student. They both join me today as youth advisors to the Environmental Justice in Tobacco Control Project of the Sierra Club .  Their generation cares passionately about the health of th...

Tobacco control and climate advocacy collide in today’s episode, just as we are all getting ready to head into summer fun in the Great Outdoors! Sadly, the tobacco industry is spoiling our summer fun in many ways. Today I am joined by Amanda Simpson , who is a policy analyst with the Environmental Justice in Tobacco Control Project of the Sierra Club to help us understand the issue.  From causing...

On today’s podcast, I am joined by Ylenia Aguilar of Moms Clean Air Force and EcoMadres to share her own story from undocumented immigrant to tireless advocate for clean air and climate action. She shares important approaches to accepting our own imperfections, navigating important work while we are busy, and the joy we can all feel by adding our own “granito de arena” or grain of sand to tip the...

Turns out that Spring Cleaning can be pretty powerful- it can help or harm us. I often struggle to understand volatile organic compounds or VOCs. Plenty of products are marketed as "low VOC"- is that better? To learn more about how these chemicals interact in our homes, I interviewed Dr. Delphine Farmer , a Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University . She is an atmospheric chemi...

Dr Jeremy T. Hua MD, MPH is a lung doctor at National Jewish Health   in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences . He specializes in patients who get sick from where they work and how we can help keep them healthy. Today we discuss crystalline silica and the booming lung disease caused by inhaling it. Many of the workplaces are smaller, and employers may be unaware of the ri...

This is a special bonus episode to bring you some good clean air and climate news. Advocacy is often hard and frustrating, but it is important to celebrate when improvement is made. On February 7th, 2024, the EPA released it’s final rule for the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (or NAAQS) for particulate matter pollution, lowering the annual standard to 9 ug/m3. The previous standard was 12ug...

Dr. Drew Harris, MD, FCCP is a lung doctor who specializes in lung disease related to coal mine dust and is passionate about healthcare for rural and disadvantaged populations. He serves as the medical director of the Black Lung Program at Stone Mountain Health Services in southwest Virginia. He joins me today to discuss the black lung crisis in Central Appalachia, where over 1000 people have been...