My name is Bo A. Rodgers and I am a student at Georgia State University. I was born in a suburb of Atlanta and I grew up with asthma. When I was just two months old, my mom found out I had asthma. Every four hours I was required to have a breathing treatment and occasionally I would have mild or severe asthma attacks.
Growing up in Metropolitan Atlanta, the air quality reports and indices were integral to my daily life, especially during the summer. My mom would watch the news every morning to hear the smog report and if the air quality was bad for that day, I was not allowed to go outside and play. If I were to go out on a bad air quality day, I would most likely have had an asthma attack. I have asthma to this day; however, I love exercising outside by running, walking, jogging, and hiking. To do these activities, I have to use an inhaler and on some days during the summer I cannot even go outside without losing my breath or my chest tightening up.
Because of the experience I have had with asthma, I am a firm believer in improving air quality and cutting carbon emissions that are harmful not only to the environment, but to people with breathing conditions such as asthma. All in all, asthma is a hard enough condition to live with as a child, but combined with pollution and bad air quality, it is even harder.
Written by: Bo A. Rodgers
