Hello Wild Fire Season! I knew you were coming and I am ready to keep our asthma symptoms low, but am never happy about it. As of Sunday early evening, the smoke from the Bison wildfire, which is miles south of my home is blowing in to visit us. My eyes started burning and I thought it had to do with my lack of dust planning while cleaning my closet and moving furniture during my weekend cleaning rampage. I’m severely allergic to dust and committed the cardinal sin of allergies by forgetting to wear a face mask while doing heavy dusting. I have wonderful face masks on hand, so I had no excuse. My daughter finally came running to the office yelling for me to go outside to see the smoke from Douglas county rolling in! As much as I appreciated her news, I reminded her that watching smoke roll in was probably not a good choice for an asthmatic child! Needless to say, we had to pow wow about wild fire season and renewed our top three steps to keeping our lungs safe and asthma symptoms in control during wild fires.
This was the smoking rolling in on its way to my house Sunday evening facing East. This smoke tells me to jump into gear to manage and control potential asthma symptoms.
Our Top Three Asthma Symptoms Reduction Tips for Managing Summer Wild Fire Smoke or Poor Air Quality filled days!
[unordered_list style=”red-x”]- Stay indoors with the windows closed as much as possible. Obviously, picnics and outdoor events are cancelled immediately.
- Cover nose and mouth when heading outside. My children either pull up their shirts, use bandanas or if bike riding grab a face mask and groan at me.
- Use air filters at home to help filter out smoke. Earlier this year during a wild fire that was close to our home, my fire-place damper blew open filling my living room with smoke. I put both of my air filters in the room and in less than two hours the room was cleared of smoke. Thankfully, my kids did not experience any asthma symptoms!
I took this picture from the back of my house looking West…just sunshine and clear skies!
Our top three list also applies to all situations where the air quality is compromised and rising asthma symptoms could become troublesome. If the air quality is poor when school starts up, I always call the school office and my child’s teacher to explain that my asthmatic child needs to remain indoors during recess and lunch. Thankfully, our school district follows our local Health Department recommendations and often receive notice before I even call that either asthmatic children needs to stay indoors or sometimes all children are required to stay indoors.
What are your top three steps you take to keep asthma symptoms under control when the air quality drops!?
Testing the shopping waters
I’m testing the waters with Amazon Affiliates. Therefore, if you make Amazon purchase that begins with a link from my website, I earn a small commission. I’m hoping that this program will be a win-win situation, where you will be able to check out products that might work for you and I’ll earn a little extra $$.
So…here are the masks I use and really like since they are soft! My doctor had recommended them to me and I like them the best so far. He suggested this brand to me two years ago during flu season and told me to always keep them on hand. With asthma, a simple flu can have devastating effects.
One of the hardest things I find about managing both life threatening food allergies and asthma is talking to others. I hate to be the one that might be perceived as demanding, pushing or for asking too much. What I now know, fourteen years later, is that honest, clear information presented with kindness works!..
[…] time: I’ve blogged about clean air and asthma in Asthma symptoms: 3 Polluted Air tips but only focused on keeping poor outdoor air quality outside. I overlooked mentioning one critical […]