Lung Disease Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Senate Health Committee Focuses On Tobacco Cessation and Lung Health

A bill prohibiting smoking in a vehicle when a minor is present passed the Senate Committee on Health and Human Resources on Tuesday.

If Senate Bill 378 is signed into law, a person 18 or older would not be allowed to possess or smoke a lit tobacco product in a motor vehicle when a person 16 years or younger is present.

Violators of the possible new law could be charged with a misdemeanor and subject to a $25 fine if they’re already being pulled over for committing another code violation.

Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha and vice chair of the committee, spoke in favor of passage of the bill.

“It’s the most severe thing in terms of fear of any patient when they have a condition where they literally can’t breathe,” Takubo said. “And when you’re in a confined space, like a vehicle, these kids’ asthma flare tremendously.”

The bill was passed by the Senate Committee on Health and Human Resources and now heads to the full Senate for their consideration.

Senate Bill 514 was also considered by the committee. This bill creates the Lung Cancer Screening and Education Act, directing the West Virginia Department of Health to establish a public education outreach campaign to publicize lung cancer screening and education services.

According to counsel, the bill also creates a fund that would be annually funded by $100,000 from tobacco tax funding and may include money appropriated by the legislature or by the federal government. The bill also allows for public and private funding sources.

To qualify for a lung screening under Senate Bill 514, a patient’s income must be at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Also, the patient must be medically eligible, which includes, but is not limited to 50 to 80-year-olds who have at least a “20 pack year” smoking history and who are currently smoke, or have quit within the past 15 years.

The bill describes a “pack year” as smoking an average of one pack of cigarettes per day for one year. So based upon the language in the bill, a person would have a 20-pack-year history of smoking one pack a day for 20 years.

The fund must be the patient’s last resort and payment for the procedure can be adjusted yearly based upon inflation.

Takubo also spoke in favor of Senate Bill 514, citing statistics from 1950 to show just how far the United States has not come.

“When you go back to 1950, the overall survival for lung cancer was 8 percent,” Takubo said. “Speed all the way up to 2013 and the survival rate only went to 15 percent. It hadn’t even doubled – a 7 percent improvement in 63 years in advances in medicine.”

Takubo said the availability of lung screenings could save lives.

“If you’re in that high risk pool, just getting a low-dose CAT scan, you lay on the table, hold your breath, in and out,” Takubo said. “It’s that fast. No needle sticks, no contrast. That one test alone decreased the risk of dying by 20 percent.”

Takubo also said that about 8 percent of West Virginians qualify for a screening.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Dementia And The Holidays, Hope For Opioid Settlement Money And Concerning Health Trends, This West Virginia Week

On this West Virginia Week, we hear about some of the health challenges facing West Virginians — including lung disease, HIV/AIDS outbreaks and recovery.

On this West Virginia Week, we hear about some of the health challenges facing West Virginians — including lung disease, HIV/AIDS outbreaks and recovery.

We also learn how to meet the challenges of the holidays with aging family members.

Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.

Learn more about West Virginia Week.

Study Shows Coal Miners Face Higher Risk Of Death From Lung Disease

The University of Illinois Chicago and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied more than 235,000 coal miners who died between 1979 and 2017.

This story was updated to note that coal miners were found to have a lower risk of dying from heart disease, not of developing it.

A federal government study shows that coal miners face a higher risk for death from lung disease, including black lung.

Coal miners born in 1940 or after have an eight times greater likelihood of dying from nonmalignant respiratory disease than the general population.

The University of Illinois Chicago and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied more than 235,000 coal miners who died between 1979 and 2017.

The study found they had far greater odds of dying of black lung, COPD and lung cancer than the general population. Modern miners face greater risk than their predecessors, and the risk is concentrated in three Appalachian states: Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

Severe black lung disease, which is caused by inhalation of mine dust, is more frequent in younger miners, the study found.

The only bright spot: coal miners were found to have a lower risk of dying from heart disease than the general population.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is expected to issue a new rule on coal dust exposure in mines.

WVU Scientists Research Burn Pit Exposures

A team at West Virginia University is studying how exposure to toxic substances from military burn pits affect veterans’ health.

In August, Congress passed the Honoring our PACT Act, intended to significantly improve healthcare access and funding for veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during military service. A team at West Virginia University is studying how exposure to toxic substances from military burn pits affect veterans’ health.

Inside the West Virginia University Inhalation Facility lab, senior research engineer Travis Goldsmith prepares a modified pellet stove for an experiment.

“We kind of ripped out the guts of it and kind of made it our own,” he said. “We added a lot of different sensors, thermocouples live in different temperatures, we got a jet fuel line hose we can drip that on one we have the auger we control the speed of the auger we control the speed of the fan.”

Goldsmith and his colleagues are studying the potential health impacts of burn pits, an incineration method used by the U.S. military to manage waste on foreign bases. Since the WVU team can’t go out back and build their own burn pit, the finite control the pellet stove offers them is key to managing the compounding variables of a real-world burn pit. Temperature of burn, distance from the source, and the materials burned, are just a few examples.

As the stove turns on, pellets meant to mimic burn pit components are automatically fed into the stove.

“We’re going to start with rubber, plastics, Styrofoam, cardboard, and just regular wood chips and sawdust. Basically like I said, try to mimic what happens at the actual burn pit,” Goldsmith said.

According to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, open-air combustion of trash and other waste in burn pits was a common practice in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas of the Southwest Asia theater of military operations. The Department of Defense has now closed out most burn pits and is planning to close the remainder.

Timothy Nurkiewicz is the chair of West Virginia University’s Department of Physiology and Pharmacology as well as the director of the Inhalation Facility.

“The line I like to use is that military bases are not like camping. In camping, what you pack in, you pack out and leave nothing behind. At a military base, what they pack in, when they’re done, everything is destroyed. And that’s achieved by burning it in a burn pit,“ Nurkiewicz said. “It ranges from simple things like paper, and wood, to more complex things like styrofoam and rubber fluids like hydraulic fluid, paint, coatings, batteries, computers, human waste, as well as surgical waste, there’s essentially no limit to it.”

When veterans started returning from the 1991 Gulf War, many began presenting with chronic, unexplained symptoms like fatigue, muscle pain, and cognitive issues. Theories as to the illness’s source ranged from vaccines to exposure to depleted uranium.

“They are over the years presenting now with what is referred to as Chronic Multisymptom Illness,” Nurkiewicz said.

Senior research engineer Travis Goldsmith presents filters before and after they are exposed to the exhaust of the laboratory’s modified pellet stove.

Instances of Chronic Multisymptom Illness, or CMI, have only increased with the U.S. military’s continued presence in the Middle East, but often it takes months or years for symptoms to present in veterans. The disease is not well understood, but a leading theory now is that the broad health impacts are caused by exposure to burn pit exhausts.

“That is first and foremost in our research, is to identify what is that lag between exposure and ultimate effect that a person is aware that there is something wrong,” Nurkiewicz said.

Burn pit emissions often wafted across a base or outpost, and therefore the potential toxicants from the burn impact every soldier and service member on the base, regardless of whether they worked directly on the pit or not.

“We haven’t even started considering things like skin exposures, or ocular exposures, or secondhand exposures, the emissions that land on solid surfaces, and then people will touch that surface and later on their hands will go into their mouth, their nose, their eyes, their ears,” Nurkiewicz said. “The lungs are our focus right now, because it is the most reasonable place to start. But there should be studies looking at these alternate routes of exposure.”

Research scientist Anand Ranpara is analyzing the soot and smoke created by the lab’s pellet stove to get a better understanding of its composition and impact on the lungs. He says they have found compounds like naphthalene and benzene at nanoscopic scales, meaning the tiny particles can easily bypass the lungs’ defense mechanisms and enter the bloodstream. They have also identified toxic gasses such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides in their experiments.

“We are not talking about only one or two impacts, it’s not one plus one is two, it could be more than two. So you have particles, and you have gasses, both are gonna cause the health impact,” Ranpara said. “And it could be exponential. And that’s exactly what our working hypothesis is building up to. That’s why we are seeing some long term health impacts, not short term immediate effects of health among veterans.”

The team’s work is ongoing, and Nurkiewicz is asking for the help of veterans to better understand the issue.

“We are not veterans. Our study inception in design is based on what we have learned from members of the West Virginia National Guard, and from the literature, but that by no means is conclusive of all of the burn pits, and all of the things that some of our soldiers may have seen,” Nurkiewicz said. “So in that capacity, we would like to ask anyone who may want to contribute to the project, please reach out to us with your information. However small you may think it is, it’s something that we don’t know. And we need your input.”

Timothy Nurkiewicz can be contacted at tnurkiewicz@hsc.wvu.edu

W.Va. Ranks Near Bottom On Smoking Report Card

West Virginia has the highest rate of tobacco use of any state. Almost a quarter of all West Virginians smoke cigarettes.

A recent report from the American Lung Association (ALA) says if the state’s tobacco control policies were stronger it could curb the use of tobacco.

A smoking habit is incredibly personal, but research shows that public health programs and policies do curb tobacco use. Taxes that jack up the price of a pack of cigarettes and laws that keep people from smoking in restaurants and workplaces make a difference.

“Increasing tobacco taxes, such as the cigarette tax, and ensuring that tax rates are equalized among all products — that is a proven, effective way to reduce tobacco use,” Molly Pisciottano, Pennsylvania and West Virginia’s director of advocacy for the American Lung Association, said.

The ALA’s 2022 State of Tobacco Control Report gave West Virginia failing grades for low tobacco taxes, a lack of access to cessation services, underfunding tobacco prevention and cessation, and no regulation on flavored products. The state received a D grade for lax indoor smoking laws.

“We fall among Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia, who also received four Fs and one D grade. And then Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas scored all Fs in all five categories,” Pisciottano said.

West Virginia’s cigarette tax is $1.20 a pack. That’s 71 cents less than the national average. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that increasing the cost of cigarettes by 20 percent is associated with 6 percent of adults quitting and 18 percent of teens and younger adults quitting.

Of the more than $200 million West Virginia collects a year through tobacco taxes, less than 1 percent goes back to tobacco prevention and cessation efforts. The CDC recommends states allocate at least 6 percent.

While most West Virginians live in a county with smoke free workplace regulations, even those local ordinances can be lax.

“There are some laws that are outdated and don’t include new products, such as E cigarettes,” Pisciottano said. “[An ordinance] would also have to include all businesses, and not exclude any, such as casinos or private clubs.”

According to the ALA’s most recent State of Lung Cancer Report, West Virginia is second to only Kentucky in the rate of new lung cancer diagnoses. The current age-adjusted rate of new lung cancer cases is 79 for every 100,000 West Virginians. The national average is 58.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Breathing Program Designed For Rural Healthcare Providers

Nearly 175,000 West Virginians have been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — also known as COPD. But experts believe many more may have the disease without knowing it.

COPD, which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is the third leading cause of disease-related death in the U.S.

The American Lung Association in West Virginia has unveiled the new Reaching Rural Providers initiative, which is designed to increase early diagnosis of COPD in rural communities by educating healthcare professionals about the disease.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia is one of seven states with the highest estimates for COPD diagnosis, hospitalizations and death, and our rural communities are harder hit,” said Deborah Brown, chief mission officer for the lung association. “In rural areas, COPD rates are twice as high as the overall population. The good news is that COPD is treatable when diagnosed early. Many people don’t recognize the symptoms of COPD until later stages of the disease, so it is critical for our rural healthcare providers to be educated on the latest symptoms, as well as the newest treatments and medications for the disease.”

The Lung Association’s new Reaching Rural Providers initiative works to increase early diagnosis of COPD in rural communities across the nation.

Resources are available nationwide, but additional focus will be on rural communities in six states with the highest estimates for COPD diagnosis, hospitalizations and death, which include Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Providers can access and download the free resources at Lung.org/COPD-rural.