In Mott Haven, a Family Copes with Mold, Pollution — and Asthma
Carmen Lugo is never far from the inhalers that she uses to keep her asthma at bay. She keeps one in the kitchen, one in her closet, one in her bedroom, and one always on her.
At 50, she has grappled with asthma most of her life, since early childhood. So has her daughter, Angelis Lugo, who is now 17.
Carmen and Angelis live in the South Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven. They moved there from Harlem 10 years ago, when Carmen lost her job as a bill collector, and, shortly thereafter, their apartment. The South Bronx wasn’t where they wanted to live, but it is where the city put them after they applied for subsidized housing. The 20-story, brick housing project they live in is managed by NYCHA.
Mott Haven is enclosed between the Deegan and the Bruckner expressways, and faces the Harlem River Yards industrial complex.
“It’s not great”, said Carmen.
“When you get a really bad asthma attack, there are people that just cough, and there are some where you see the chest going in and out. With me you hear wheezing, you can actually hear me, it sounds like a whistle, even if I have my mouth closed.”
Statistics by the New York City Department of Health show disparities between asthma cases in the Bronx — and especially in the South Bronx — and in other boroughs. In Mott Haven, more than 50 public school children out of 1,000 have “persistent” asthma — which makes it the neighborhood with the highest incidence in all five boroughs.
For the Lugos, the day begins and ends with a “pump” — what some asthmatics call their inhalers. Carmen usually uses one twice a day, and Angelis uses hers at night, before going to bed. Whether they’ll have to use it again during the day depends on the weather, the stairs they might have to climb if the elevator in their building doesn’t work, or how long the windows of their apartment remain open.
On a winter’s day, the heat in the Lugos’ fifth-floor, two-bedroom apartment is so intense that they have to leave the windows open above heavily trafficked Willis Avenue. Car horns blow constantly. And with the noise, car pollution comes in, too.
Angelis’s asthma was worse when she was a child, recalls Carmen. Now she has attacks only twice a year, but hers is still the life of an asthmatic.
Living on the fifth floor in a building where the elevators are rarely working has become a problem. Climbing up the stairs after school gets Angelis out of breath, and goes against her doctor’s advice that she should avoid physical activity.
“I can’t do sports, and I don’t like it anyway”, Angelis said. Her free time is dedicated to music. She plays the cello and the violin in an after-school program, and hopes to become a music teacher after her studies. She is now in 12th grade at MS 223 High School in South Bronx, and hopes to get into Hunter City College next year.
At school, it’s not uncommon for students to be out of breath, said Angelis. “We only have three floors, so it’s not that bad, but everyone is out of breath.”
Even though parents can give the school nurse a prescription for an inhaler to in case of an asthma attack, it’s more common for students to be sent home instead.
“Nobody goes to the nurse… They can’t do anything. So they just give you ice, and they call your parents if it’s bad,” said Angelis. When she had her last asthma attack at school, in the spring, she just called Carmen to pick her up.
At home, in addition to the inhalers, they have a nebulizer, which is a machine with a tube connected to a breathing mask. Medicine put into the machine is pumped through the tube and can be breathed in from the mask. Carmen and Angelis use Albuterol with their nebulizer to open lung airways. Nebulizers are more powerful than inhalers, and do a better job in case of a bad attack.
Carmen keeps one nebulizer at home and another at her nephew’s, whom she visits sometimes on the weekend. “So they don’t have to take me to the hospital if I get an attack,” she said.
As Medicare and Medicaid recipients, Carmen and Angelis are provided their inhalers and nebulizers for free.
What does Carmen’s condition feel like? She explains it this way: “Take a straw, put the straw into your mouth without having air coming in and hold your nose. Then breathe through the straw.”
On a typical weekday, Angelis comes home from school in the early afternoon, and leaves shortly after to go to music practice at her school, or with the UpBeatNYC youth band. Weekends are for concerts, and Carmen never misses one. Being in the first row filming her daughter with her phone is one of the few things that make her smile — or that can get her out of her apartment.
“I’ve had asthma attacks on the street that ended in the hospital,” she said. “And I get panicked. So I go outside when I have to. Like if I have to go to the supermarket, if I have to go get to the school, if I have to go to music… those things I do with my daughter. If it wasn’t for my daughter, I don’t know what I would do.”
Life inside is not hurdle-free, either. In the Lugos’ small, windowless bathroom, mold has been growing for years. Carmen says the housing authority took action only when a broken pipe flooded one of the walls last month. So they sent someone to paint the walls, but now big bubbles are forming, and the new paint is peeling — a sign that the problem is still there, and that the mold will probably come back.
Mold is a trigger of asthma, and a constant issue in low-income housing. In 2013, asthmatic people living in public housing filed a lawsuit against NYCHA to get better responses from the agency to mold and humidity issues. They reached a settlement, and, in 2014, a 36-month agreement was signed to compel NYCHA to take mold samplings and address the issue for the 400,000 New Yorkers living in the projects it manages.
