Wayne State, ACCESS Studying Asthma-Pollution Links in Dearborn
The Dearborn-based nonprofit social services agency, ACCESS, is working with Wayne State University to study asthma in the Detroit’s suburb’s heavily industrial south end.
The Detroit university and the Arab American Center for Community and Economic Social Services, known as ACCESS, will be recruiting participants starting this fall for the three-year study. Researchers will collect air samples and examine them for contents that can trigger asthma.
The study is focusing on the area that includes three steel mills, an oil refinery and a wastewater treatment plant in Dearborn and neighboring Detroit.
ACCESS’ Healthy Kids project coordinator Elizabeth Hughes says asthma rates among the area’s Arab and elderly communities have not been sufficiently studied.
Other contributors are Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of Michigan.
The Associated Press