Disease threatens young Germans

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 19

Disease threatens young Germans

NZPA-Reuter Bonn Peter is an active, healthy-looking two-year-old, but every few weeks he suddenly gets suffocating attacks of laryngitis- and a hacking cough which could kill him. Peter is one of an estimated 16,000 children in West Germany who suffer from the potentially fatal pseudocroup syndrome, which scientists believe is caused or at least aggravated by air pollution. Most children who suffer from this disease, which strikes those between the ages of two months and three years, are lucky enough to survive. But some suffocate within minutes while their parents stand helplessly by. A pediatrician, Berthold Mersmann, from the industrial town of Essen, was one of the first doctors in Germany to suspect a link between the rising number of pseudo-croup cases and air pollution. He noticed to his surprise that most of the children in his district, which is next to an aluminium factory, had pseudocroup attacks on Friday evening between 9 and 11 p.m. Dr Mersmann’s suspicions were reinforced when he

found that the level of pollutants in the air was measured only on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. “I concluded that the factory was releasing some of the pollutants after that time, namely on Friday nights,” he told a recent hearing. The attacks in Dr Mersmann’s district have since begun to occur throughout the week-end and not just on Friday nights.

Dr Mersmann’s findings have caused an outcry among parents, opposition politicians, and environmentalists across Germany, and triggered a number of studies in different cities. Government officials in Bonn say that no reliable scientific proof links pollution and pseudo-croup.

But first results of a study by a pediatrics professor, Harald Haupt, of Duisburg University Hospital, show a clear correlation between the level of pollutants and the frequency of attacks.

Spurred by the scientists’ findings, parents of children suffering from the illness have organised a lobby. There are groups in most big cities. The parents give

one another moral support and instruction on how to cope with the attacks. The only medication that helps is cortisone, which reduces the dangerous swelling of the larynx and prevents suffocation.

Many families have begun to keep it in the house for emergencies, but it takes about half an hour to work and is considered unhealthy when taken over extended periods or in great quantities.

If the child turns blue before the cortisone takes effect, a trip to the hospital is the only course left But sometimes the attacks occur so fast that parents are completely helpless.

“I know a woman whose baby died within a few minutes right in her arms,” says Beate Stein, a member of the parents’ group in Bonn, and mother of a pseudo-croup sufferer.

Some politicians show little sensitivity towards the parents’ fears.

Ernst Albrecht, the Christian Democratic Premier of the state of Lower Saxony, recommended to a worried mother recently that she should move to the country to spare her child the lifethreatening attacks.