| If you smoke, quit. Click here for resources to stop smoking. |
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Make sure the person is not around anyone who is smoking. Secondhand smoke (even the smell from a smoker's clothing) can make healthy people sick but it is even worse for people with asthma. Click here for facts about secondhand tobacco smoke. |
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Click here for a list of smoke-free restaurants and smoke-free activities in King County.
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| If wood smoke is a trigger: |
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Avoid using a fireplace as a heat source if possible. |
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Try to limit your child's outside activities and make sure they keep their asthma medicine with them during a burn ban. Click here to find out about burn bans.
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| If air pollution is a trigger: |
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Learn about local air quality alerts. These alerts are on local TV news reports, newspapers, and radio. Click here for information about local air quality. |
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When air quality is poor you may want to limit your child's outside activities. Make sure they keep their asthma medicine with them.
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| If dust or mold is a trigger: |
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Cover mattresses and pillows with allergen-proof zippered covers. |
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Replace carpet (if possible) with linoleum, tile or wood because carpets collect dust. |
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Reduce the dampness (humidity) in your house. Mold can be a special problem in damp weather. It is easiest to reduce humidity by opening windows, making sure that steam from cooking and running hot water (bath, shower, laundry) does not travel through the house. It is not usually necessary to buy a dehumidifier - a machine that takes dampness out of the air. If you decide to use a dehumidifier, clean it every day so mold does not grow in the dehumidifier. |
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For other ideas about how to improve indoor air quality, click here.
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| If perfumes or cleaning products are triggers: |
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If the person's asthma is triggered by strong smells, like perfume, you can avoid wearing perfume when you know you'll be with them. |
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Some commercial cleaning products that you purchase at the store have chemicals and scents that can trigger an asthma attack.
"Green cleaning" means using cleaning products that don't have these triggers. Click here for recipes for making green cleaning solutions that are safe for you and the environment and are low cost.
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| If pet dander is a trigger: |
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If the person's asthma is triggered by cats or dogs, consider keeping your pets in a different room away from the person with asthma or when visiting someone's home with pets, ask them to move the pets to a different room before arriving and remove cat or dog hair from furniture.
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Click here to find out more ways on how one can stay away from things that can make asthma worse.
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