Asthma and Weatherization in Maine

The Maine State Housing Authority in partnership with The National Center for Healthy Housing explored asthma rates among the occupants in housing units served by Maine's Weatherization program and documented moisture and mold problems, which are known housing-based asthma triggers. The goal of this effort is to better understand the moisture and mold hazards and asthma rates in households where Weatherization work occurs in order to begin a discussion on how to effectively target Weatherization and other resources to address housing based asthma triggers. This work was supported by a grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust.

Asthma is a significant health concern among the occupants of units treated by the Maine Weatherization program. Roughly 1 out of every 6^th home (17%) treated by the Weatherization program is occupied by at least one person with asthma.  These results are consistent with other studies of asthma in Maine that show current asthma rates among adults in lower income households at 11% and that 14.9% of lower income adults report having asthma during their lifetime. There are no comparable state data on asthma rates by household to which we can compare the results from this study. However, it is clear that a high proportion of units in the Weatherization program are occupied by asthmatics.

The data also indicate that Weatherization units have substantial moisture problems, which is a known asthma trigger. Moisture problems were most frequently observed around dirt floors and in bathrooms, kitchens, and around dryers with poor ventilation. Mold and mildew were most frequently observed in crawl spaces, bathroom, basements, and along windows. These data strongly suggest that below grade spaces, sources of high humidity such as improperly vented bathrooms, kitchens and dryers are likely contributing to the bulk of moisture and mold problems in this group of housing units. The moisture and mold problems are most significant in mobile homes and single family homes – moisture and/or mold problems were observed in 26% of single family homes and 27% of mobile homes.

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You may download the Asthma and Weatherization in Maine document in Acrobat (.pdf) format. (File size 128k.)

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