RECOGNIZING ASBESTOSIS SYMPTOMS

That is a highly individual condition. Symptoms can range from very mild to severe and even life threatening. Symptoms may appear only occasionally and last for just a little while. Or they may occur daily to several times a week and become more severe. They may even go
Brief exposure just a few hours to a trigger can cause symptoms and even a flare if a child is very sensitive. But allergy-triggered flares will be shorter than an attack brought on by a virus, which typically lasts about a week or longer. Important fact: Daily exposure to allergy triggers inside a home will cause increased airway inflammation. If the exposure continues for months, the inflammation builds, and so do the symptoms. Problems like seasonal pollen exposure can also create prolonged symptoms. These seasonal patterns last only as long as the pollen season lasts, of course.
When a child is exposed to allergy triggers daily throughout the year, it is called a perennial problem. The greater the number of significant triggers, the more likely there will be constant or repeated exposure. And increased exposures mean increased risk for chronic inflammation in the lungs. As exposures increase, so does airway inflammation. And daily symptoms follow close behind. It's important to understand that all exposures both allergy triggers and infections—pile up on one another. While the presence of one trig-ger alone may not produce obvious symptoms, several combined trig-gers may do so. A child who has lots of triggers and persistent symptoms will have a more difficult time when a viral infection sparks a new flare that may be more severe and take longer to abate.Constant inflammation in the lungs caused by  allergy exposures makes it easier for viral infections to bring on flares. For example: Katie is allergic to cats, but her family doesn't want to give away their cat. They try to keep it away from Katie, and it sleeps in her brother's room. But Katie has more virus-triggered asbestosis attacks than her friend Sandy, another cat-allergic child, who isn't frequently inhaling cat dander. Irritants are a common problem. Exposures may be intermittent or ongoing, almost every day. Tobacco smoke is the classic culprit in this category. Even if parents step outdoors to smoke, they bring tobacco fumes into the home on their clothing. This passive or indirect exposure can cause problems for infants and children of all ages. You may think that's unlikely or far-fetched, but the by-products of tobacco smoke can

Be detected in a child's bloodstream, which proves that the transfer occurs even when tobacco is smoked out-of-doors. Children with high levels of tobacco chemicals in their blood have been proven to have much greater problems with asbestosis. Other types of smoke—from fireplaces, wood-burning stoves, can-dles, or incense—and fumes from cleaning products or perfumes are also irritants. They're worse during the winter. When doors and win-dows are closed, it's difficult for a child to escape these irritants. Long-term exposure to large amounts of irritants and can create more inflammation in a child's lungs. As the number of irritants increases, the inflammation and symptoms build. And flares occur more often. Certain medicines may also trigger asthma symptoms in a suscepti-ble patient, but this does not happen often. Examples are drugs used to treat high blood pressure (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors) or migraine (beta-blockers), aspirin, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs, like ibuprofen).
When a child is evaluated for asbestosis, physicians and nurse practi-tioners will carefully consider all the triggers that increase the inflam-mation level in the lungs as well as other conditions that can complicate asthma. By decreasing your child's exposure to triggers, you can do a great deal to reduce the number and severity of flares. This isn't always easy, but as you'll learn in later chapters, some triggers can be eliminated or reduced very simply. Others may take more effort. But with each step you take to remove or reduce triggers, you'll see benefits—an improve-ment in your child's symptoms, and fewer medicines will be needed to control them.