Our mission:

To reduce the impact of asthma across New England, through collaborations of health, housing, education, and environmental organizations with particular focus on the contribution of schools, homes, and communities to the disease and with attention to its disproportionate impact on populations at greatest risk.


Research

On this page you will find links to key research in the area of identifying home hazards and effective interventions. You will also find links to research that the Asthma Regional Council has sponsored or partnered in.

Air Purification

California Air Resources Board Review of Home Air Purifiers

Control of asthma triggers in indoor air with air cleaners: a modeling analysis. 
Myatt TA, Minegishi T, Allen JG, Macintosh DL. Environmental Health, 2008


Asthma Triggers and Effectiveness of Home Interventions


Key Research on Asthma and Effectiveness of Home Interventions

Key Research on Asthma, Pests and Pesticides

Chemicals and Body Burden

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has conducted biomonitoring for chemica exposures in the U.S. population since 1999. CDC has pubished the Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.


The Environmental Working Group conduct testing in humans for pesticides, plastics, flame retartdents and other consumer products. The also product consumer shopping guides for such things as pesticides in food.


Chemicals in Households


Silent Spring's Household Air and Dust Study
Silent Spring researchers have take indoor air and dust samples from 120 homes on Cape Cod and measured the concentrations of 89 chemicals widely used in pesticides, detergents, plastics, furniture, and cosmetics. The chemicals tested are identified as endocrine disrupting compounds, which mimic or interfere with human hormones, sometimes affecting cell growth and development.
The number of chemicals detected in the homes averaged 19 for air and 26 for dust.

News
Oct 26, 2011

On October 12, 2011 ARC and close to 50 co-signers submitted testimony requesting that the Institute of Medicine examine and address the non-clinical best practice components of comprehensive asthma management as part of Community Based

Non-Clinical Prevention Policies and Wellness Strategies.

Oct 26, 2011

Over 50 organizations and individuals joined ARC and Health Resources in Action in expressing to New England U.S. Senator4s our extreme concern about the proposed complete elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program by the Senate Appropriations Committee in the proposed FY12 spending bill for Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.

Apr 11, 2011
More than 400 organizations and advocates joined ARC and its partners in sending a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, expressing deep concerns over budget cuts to environmental health programs.