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Unhealthy air poses risk to local people fighting lung disease

For some people in the Puget Sound area, the poor air quality is much more than an inconvenience; it can be challenging and even detrimental to breathe in air that is full of particulates.

“It’s really terrible,” Ron Parsons said Monday, glancing at his patio overlooking Lake Sammamish. “When you can't see across the lake, you know it's pretty bad.”

It’s so bad that Parsons is staying indoors for the next couple of days.

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“My lungs are about 50 percent,” he said. “And I use supplemental oxygen to go anywhere.”

Normally, Parsons walks around his Bellevue neighborhood for exercise. But with air quality so poor in Western Washington, he’s looking for air conditioning.

“I probably would have go to Bellevue Square, just walk around the mall,” he said.

Parsons was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis about 10 years ago.

“And I said, ‘Well, thank God it's not cancer!’” he said. “I looked it up on the internet and it said people die two to five years -- 60 percent of the people do--after diagnosis.”

So what is the disease, exactly?

“It’s characterized by a progressive scarring in the lungs,” Dave Sherry, who has the disease and leads a support group in Seattle, said. “The scarring takes place in the area where the oxygen transfer takes place.”

It’s a rare disease, he said, and about 200,000 people in the United States currently have it.

“About 40,000 thousand new diagnoses every year,” he said, “and about the same number of deaths.”

The unhealthy air is hurting not just people with pulmonary fibrosis.

According to the Washington Department of Health, certain groups are especially sensitive to poor air quality. They include children; adults over 65; people who are pregnant; people who have heart or lung issues, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; and people who have had a stroke.

“The effect that I can tell from this air is I just get kind of a dry and burning throat,” Sherry said. For people with pulmonary fibrosis, the hazy, poor air can be downright dangerous.

“When you breathe in the particulate matter that's in the air, you're putting your lungs at great risk of increasing that inflammatory response, and potentially having your lungs lose even more lung function,” he said.

Sherry said if he is going outside, he tries to wear a respiratory mask rated N95 or N100 to protect him from air pollution.

Ron Parsons said he is grateful for every breath of air.

“Every day is wonderful,” he said. “Even though we've got some smoke, it's great to be here.”

The Greater Seattle Pulmonary Fibrosis Support Group meets once a month at the University of Washington Medical Center.

You can contact Dave Sherry at dssherry52@icloud.com.