Asthmatics are killing polar bears (& a difficult question)
Think of the great asthmatics in history… (there are actually quite a few - David Beckham, Samuel L Jackson, Billy Joel - yes, really!!)
Do you view them as selfish, arrogant, dangerous? NO? Well you should. Because they are. The wheezy bastards are in the cross hair - and rightly so. For today I learned that their insistence in breathing comfortably, oxygenating their blood and staying upright is all at the expense of our dear planet - each year British asthmatics alone produce 619,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from their little blue toys. (619,000 tonnes is, by comparison, the equivalent of two billion car miles). Christ alive.
Can’t they just stop being asthmatic? Surely it’s a trend, a fad - an excuse to get a note from matron excusing yourself from the long jump. A way to dodge conscription - or competition scuba diving. Surely it isn’t THAT hard to breathe?
As it happens, I am one of the wheezy bastards - condemned at birth and handed a blue polar bear killer in place of a rattle or toy. Deprived of the joy of scuba diving in a terrorism hotspot, forced to endure the indignity of pulling out an inhaler after experiencing the slightest of inconveniences (Admittedly I mastered this for comic effect some twenty-five years ago). It is a pretty crap condition, for some people it is fairly light, trivial and for others it can be fatal.
Fortunately I sit equidistant between the two and provided it is well managed, through a combination of check-ups, daily tablets and a bandolier of polar bear killers, it does not cause too much trouble.
That being said, Asthma has caused two great embuggerances for me. The first is the fact my planned career (I was pretty obsessed with this) of joining the Royal Air Force was soon a fallacy, and the second is the sheer beauty of an Asthma Attack - they are somewhere between an elephant (or paid lady elephant) sitting on your chest and drowning in a pool of warm San Pellegrino. It is terrifying to you and to those around you, including The Blonde who has driven me to A&E or hosted paramedics in the front room (Grandiose term, our cottage only have 4 rooms!) numerous times. I digress, but I’ll take a morsel of sympathy at this juncture.
Now, back to Just Stop Wheezing, who, I assume, will soon chain themselves outside of the nearest Inhaler factory, respiratory hospital or Billy Joel concert in protest. (For legal reasons I must point out no such protest group exists - yet). Should they direct their anger at the global diaspora of 0.25bn Asthmatics -0.5m of whom die from Asthma each year - unlikely. Instead, the vitriol should go to the mass-market manufacturers of these devices and ask two simple questions
Is there an alternative to the propellant gas used to get the medicine down my gullet and into my lungs?
Moving past the gas, surely there’s an alternative to the awkwardly shaped plastic shell that holds the gas? (Although they are indeed angular and awkward there is a fate worse still- the majority of my formative school years I was forced to carry around a dildo disguised as an inhaler - look it up!)
Question two currently yields no answer, (although I have a couple of enterprising friends that I’m sure could soon invent a Bamboo one and make their fortune)
But there is an answer to question one - it’s a different kind of gas (HFC-152a to those in the know) and it cuts emissions by 91% - it is the Prius, or populist Tesla, of inhalers. In fact, it would come at no additional cost to aunty NHS nor reduce its clinical effects.
As it happens I have tried such an eco-inhaler for the last few years and whilst it’s medicinal effects, I’m told, are the same as my previous 4x4 3.4l diesel powered inhaler, I was and am not convinced - the lack of propellant gas does not leave one with the same sense of deep satisfaction (Ooh err missus!) as my predecessor - but I am still here and still breathing.
So, like those feeling the pinch from investing in solar, binning their petrol car, ditching deodorant (A feeble facade for simply wanting to be smelly), we wheezers must ask ourselves a simple but difficult question; must we forego subjective satisfaction that our lung-drug is working to save Mother Nature? Of course we will - but this is indeed a very human and very real sacrifice to make.
Those in the UK will see the NHS (at least on the surface) finally undergoing some structural review and scrutiny - part of this has to be the environmental impact of such an organisation - an organisation which accounts for 4% of all of the UK’s carbon emissions. Not all of this 4% will come from the wheezing masses, much of it from single use plastics, an aging estate and the sheer result of the incredibly work they do.
Difficult questions to answer but ask they must.