Beacon Dispatch

City trees healthier than in Hudson Valley

Did you know that cottonwood trees grow twice as fast in New York City than they do in the Hudson Valley? It may seem unlikely, but old coal burning power plants, like Danskammer in Newburgh, pump serious amounts of pollution into our air and water. The result: ground level ozone is  much higher here in the Hudson Valley than in the city. The Poughkeepsie Journal recently ran an editorial calling on Governor Pataki to live up to his promises to limit these emissions.

And now there's an online petition you can sign to pressure our county legislature to pass a recently introduced clean air resolution. This seems like the least we can do when, according to the  New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the coal-burning Danskammer power plant put 122 pounds of mercury into our air in 2002 (51 pounds more than in 1997), and there are are only three power plants in the state with higher recorded mercury emissions. The Danskammer plant put 2,564,063 tons of carbon dioxide into our air in 2002 (32,279 more than in 1997), and 12,120 tons of sulfur dioxide into our air in 2002 (892 more tons than in 1997.)

Death of the Bedside Manner

Over the past month our youngest son, Finn, has been diagnosed with Bronchiolitis, a common lung infection that affects kids between 2 and 12 months. He'd been wheezing and coughing for a few days when Anouk took him to the doctor. (He had a hard time breathing when he was first born, so we didn't want to wait too long.) Dr. Choi, our pediatrician, immediately prescribed an albuterol nebulizer -- a breathing machine that delivers the drug in a mist. (The albuterol needs to be inhaled to be effective.) Of course we had no idea how to handle the nebulizer. It's a machine about the size of an am/fm radio, and the motor is powerful enough to send a powerful vibration through the house. The breathing mask is designed to look like a fish to make the whole ordeal more user friendly. Here's a cheerful picture I found on the Web:

It turns out that the drug albuterol can cause the heartbeat to race, and make the child hyperactive, a controversial side effect we had to learn for ourselves. Depsite the sleepless nights, the condition cleared up after a few days, only to reappear again last week. The wheezing and cough were back, but much less severe than the first time. Anouk went back to the pediatrician, who told her that if he got it again, she'd have to diagnose Finn with asthma, but "not to worry, the morbidity rates are no worse than normal. He'll live a full, normal life." I guess we should appreciate getting a straight story. Trouble is, we're not sure if it's the second case, or just a continuation of the first. And we've been prescribed an even more aggressive schedule for the nebulizer, despite the fact that his symptoms were less severe. Thankfully, this time we're using levalbuterol, a version of the drug that doesn't cause hyperactivity.

But the whole experience has left us desperate for a second opinion. The few moments we got with the doctors, they didn't explain the side effects of albuterol, and asthma and "morbidity rates" were mentoned like we were medical interns, not parents. The least they could have done was explain the options. But neither Dr. Choi nor Dr. DeMarco took the time to do that. We'd love to find a pediatrician that has time for us. Until we do, we'll have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

Precious Bodily Fluids

According to the Center for Disease Control, "Fluoridation of the public water supply is the most equitable, cost-effective, and cost-saving method of delivering fluoride to the community, and prevent tooth decay." So I was surprised to hear that our local water supply here in Beacon is not fluoridated. In fact, New York is among the least fluoridated states in the union, with only 67.8% of public water supplies receiving the treatment. If you have kids, this means they need the same kind of unpleasant fluoride treatments I used to get at the dentists years ago.