SCHOOLS SEEING MORE ASTHMA DUST, TRAFFIC MAY BE MAJOR CAUSES.

Byline: Susan Abram Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The plastic baskets inside Sierra Vista Junior High School's health office tell a sliver of the story behind one of the biggest health issues facing children today.

Each basket is packed with dozens of pocket-size zip bags. Each zip bag contains a student's inhaler. These are just the backups, the ``just in case I forgot mine at home'' inhalers.

The number of inhalers kept in cupboards of the William S. Hart Union High School District's health offices has grown each year - evidence, say school health officials, that asthma among children in Santa Clarita has increased as each school year begins.

``In all the schools, we're seeing a dramatic increase,'' said Christine Amstutz, supervisor of health services for the district. ``I know a lot of our kids carry their own inhalers, so we have no way of knowing for sure.''

Throughout the district, especially at the junior and senior high schools, asthma has become commonplace, with 8 percent of all schoolchildren reporting asthma as a health problem. The numbers are based on information culled from students' emergency cards.

That percentage may seem small, Amstutz said, but considering that many students who fill out emergency cards may not be admitting they have asthma, the numbers could be higher.

``The severity of our asthmatics has gotten worse too, because there are more nebulizers at schools,'' Amstutz said. ``When I first started here in 1994, we didn't have one.''

According to a report compiled by Amstutz, of the 6,800 junior high school students enrolled in the Hart district, 600, or 9 percent, have asthma. Sierra Vista has the highest percentage of student asthmatics at 12 percent.

At the high schools, of the more than 12,000 students, about 1,000 have asthma, or 8.5 percent. Saugus High School has the highest, with 11 percent.

The district dispenses between 60 and 80 medications per day per campus, the majority for respiratory problems such as asthma, Amstutz said.

About 10 years ago, the district voted to allow junior and high school students with asthma to carry their own inhalers with a consent form signed by a doctor and a parent.

California is one of several states that has no state law or regulation allowing students to carry and self-administer prescribed medication for asthma, leaving school districts to decide whether their children can carry them. In the Lancaster School District, for example, students must check inhalers in at the health office.

Amstutz said she compiled the numbers to learn if there were specific asthma clusters in the district and to prove that the air quality in the city has worsened. She believes her research proves that schools built closer to development projects, as well as some of the sand and gravel quarries near Soledad Canyon, show more children with asthma. The proposed Cemex mining project, which would entail mining 56 million tons of gravel from Soledad Canyon over the next 20 years, will further compromise air quality around the schools, she said.

City officials have said the diesel semis carrying gravel on local roads in and out of the mine will more than double state air quality standards for particulate matter, such as dust. And over the past three years, the Santa Clarita Valley has recorded the third-highest levels of ozone in the air of any region in the United States. In total, there were nearly 50 days per year from 2001 through 2003 when it was unhealthy to exercise outdoors due to heightened ozone levels, the Environmental Protection Agency has said.

Santa Clarita also has relatively high levels of particulate matter in the air, though that issue is not yet as severe as the ozone problem, according to officials for the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Health experts from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services said any correlation between quarries and asthma has not been studied enough.

They say other factors point to the cause of the high asthma rates Amstutz is reporting.

``We have not found higher rates of asthma in the eastern portion of Los Angeles County, though we have had higher rates in the Antelope Valley, because of traffic and dust, maybe agriculture,'' said Dr. Paul Simon, director of health assessment and epidemiology for the county. ``It could also be there are more smokers there.''

Simon said the rates in Santa Clarita also can be increasing because it is an affluent community, and children have better access to health care. Physicians, he said, are diagnosing asthma more.

But physicians from Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital say they, too, have seen the increase among teenagers.

``Asthma has been on the rise for many years and while we don't know the reason for sure, we attribute the increase to industrialization,'' said Dr. Chand Khanna, a pulmonary specialist. ``There's also a lot more pollution in the world.''

As for an impact the Cemex mine could make, Khanna said it is unclear.

``While we don't know what the impact will be on healthy people, we definitely believe that people who already have respiratory problems will see their systems increase,'' Khanna said. ``This will also impact more people who live in the vicinity.''

Amstutz believes the air quality in Santa Clarita has worsened since she moved to the city from the Antelope Valley about nine years ago. Her husband, an avid outdoorsman, died because of asthma. He was 43.

``I stayed in the Antelope Valley for almost nine years, and moved to Santa Clarita to get away from the air quality there,'' she said. ``When we moved out here, my girls did so much better, until about three years ago. I just want to tell parents and the community that asthma is irreversible. Asthma does not go away. It is like the sleeping dragon that raises its head and spews fire.''

Susan Abram [phone]

susan.abram(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Christine Amstutz of the Hart School District holds bins of asthma medications for kids at Sierra Vista Junior High School.

David Crane/Staff Photographer