Survey: Asthma rates up in New York after 9/11

Health officials reported New Yorkers with worse asthma symptoms said they had difficulty breathing after the 9/11 attacks because of smoke and debris in the air.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Psychological stress from last year's terrorist attacks and smoke from the fires that burned for weeks in Lower Manhattan appear to have resulted in an increase in the incidence of asthma in New York, health officials said Thursday.

City and federal health officials based their conclusions on telephone interviews with 988 New Yorkers in a survey conducted from mid-October through mid-November.

Of 134 people who already had been diagnosed with asthma, 34 respondents, or 27 percent, said their symptoms worsened after the September 11 attacks, investigators said in a report published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication.

Those who said their asthma symptoms worsened said they were more likely to have:

But the authors acknowledged that their study has limitations: The worsening of asthma symptoms was self-reported; no objective measure was used to assess it.

In addition, people with health problems may have been more or less likely to participate in the survey than others, possibly skewing the results, the authors said.

Another limitation is that the severity of asthma typically worsens in the fall.

But the authors, from the New York Academy of Medicine and CDC, said their report has value.

"Despite these limitations, the survey data suggest that both the environmental and psychological sequelae of the September 11 attacks contributed to increasing symptoms experienced by some persons with asthma during the weeks following the attacks," they concluded.

"Persons with asthma and their clinicians should be aware of the role these factors might play in worsening asthma after disasters."

In a separate report in the same CDC publication, three-fourths of the 3,512 people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut interviewed by telephone late last year said they had problems related to the attacks.

Nearly half -- 48 percent -- said they experienced anger after the attacks.

Of those who said they had problems, one in eight, or 12 percent, said they had sought help, primarily from family members (36 percent) and friends or neighbors (31 percent).

About 3 percent of alcohol drinkers said they increased their drinking after the attacks, 21 percent of smokers said they smoked more and 1 percent of nonsmokers said they had taken up the habit.

Women were more likely than men to have participated in a religious or community memorial service (55.1 percent compared with 43 percent) and to have gotten help (15.3 percent to 8.8 percent).

Men were more likely to imbibe more (4.2 percent to 2.4 percent), and women smokers were more likely than men smokers to light up more, the study said.

Some 80 percent of those questioned said they watched more news on television or checked the Internet.