Her Story

How Cleaner Indoor Air Helped Improve one Little Girl's Chronic Lung Disease

by: Debra Gordon

All 5-year-old Rebecca Preuss wanted for Christmas last year was a puppy. But that's the one thing her mother, Tricia Preuss, wished Santa wouldn't bring. For Rebecca has cystic fibrosis (CF), a serious genetic disorder, and pet dander is to her daughter's fragile lungs as oil is to a chemical fire.

Yet today, Rebecca, of Sugar Land, Texas, plays happily with her mixed-breed dog Princess, a scene her mother never thought she'd see. It's one she attributes, in part, to an air treatment system the family installed just before Christmas.

A week after the installation, Rebecca's lungs were clear, with no wheezing, and her condition had improved so much that she was able to reduce the amount of medicine she took and the physical therapy sessions that keep her lungs clear of sticky mucus.

The best news? The doctor was so impressed with Rebecca's condition that she told the Preuss family they could keep the dog (and indoor cat), and didn't have to tear up their carpeting in favor of hard-surface flooring.

"Within two days of installation, our house began to smell fresher, our toddler stopped waking up with a stuffy nose, and my husband and I stopped sniffling and sneezing," wrote Tricia in a thank-you letter to Andrew Smith, franchise owner of Aire Serv of Southeast Texas in Nederland, Texas, who installed their system. Even the cat stopped sneezing, Tricia wrote. And one week after the installation, Rebecca's wet, phlegmy cough had changed to a dry cough — a sign of improvement.

The results don't surprise Smith, who is used to the positive feedback he receives after installing the ASATS Air Purification System. "We do get a lot of feedback from people about how impressed they are that they don't have the odors, and they don't wake up with clogged sinuses and sand-caked eyes."

Clearing the Air — Three Times Over
The ASATS is a total air treatment system designed to purify all air flowing through the house, regardless of whether you're running the heat or air conditioning. It addresses the three major indoor air contaminants, says Smith.

The first is dust, composed of animal dandruff, skin flakes, and biological components, which makes it an ideal breeding ground for mold. This is the stuff you see floating in the air in a shaft of sunlight, the dust you wipe from your dining room table only to have it reappear within hours.

ASATS traps this dust using high-quality filters designed to capture material as small as three microns — about the size of a grain of pollen.

After the air passes through these filters, it enters a specially engineered, high-intensity reflective chamber that uses UV light to damage microorganisms like mold, fungi, viruses, and bacteria so they can't reproduce or grow.

Finally, the air moves through a specially activated carbon filter that removes up to 500 gases, including cooking odors, chemical vapors, pesticides, and household cleaners. It also converts the harmful ozone created in the UV chamber into oxygen.

Taken together, removing the three pollutants from indoor air provides an overall healthier environment. "Whatever is inside our homes has a great impact on our bodies," says Smith. He's seen it personally in his own home. When one of his children would come home sick, the illness quickly spread to the rest of the family. With the ASATS, he says, even if one child gets sick, no one else in the family catches it. "My wife didn't catch anything this last winter," he says.

But cleaning your indoor air can lead to more than just a flu-free winter. It can also reduce allergies, prevent asthma attacks, and, as the Preusses found, improve a chronic condition like cystic fibrosis.

The reason? The air we breathe inside our home can be more polluted than the air outside. Considering that most people spend about 90 percent of their time indoors, that means their exposure to those pollutants is far greater than our exposure to outdoor pollutants.

That's something Tricia Preuss realized soon after her system was installed. Within a week, she says, "We noticed a fresher smell to the house; it just seemed crisper." She knows it's the ASATS, she says; three months after its installation, when the family went to visit friends for the weekend, they found themselves coping once again with the same old allergy and asthma problems.

"We were coughing and sneezing and had congestion," she wrote in her letter to Smith. "Yet within four hours of returning home, everybody's health was almost back to normal."

Surprise Diagnosis
If there is one word to describe Rebecca Preuss, it is "outgoing." "She doesn't know what a stranger is," says her mother.

In addition to her dog, the little girl loves pink baseball caps, playing dress-up (complete with makeup), and T-ball (she was the only girl on the team this year). She's also an avid artist, spending hours making arts and crafts projects.

Rebecca is also a very sensitive child, Tricia says. For instance, when she was hospitalized this fall with pneumonia, she made cards for all the other girls on her floor so they'd feel better.

Tricia calls her daughter's diagnosis "a fluke." Although she's had asthma for years, during a routine visit to the pulmonologist a couple of weeks before Christmas, the doctor decided to test Rebecca for cystic fibrosis. The results shocked everyone.

"I knew nothing about CF," says Tricia, a stay-at-home mother to Rebecca and 2-year-old Ethan. Her daughter often had bad colds and coughs, which doctors chalked up to viral infections. These illnesses, though, often developed into bacterial infections that required antibiotic treatment — common in CF.

Once Rebecca was diagnosed, the entire Preuss family got a crash course in the disease. Rebecca began taking a plethora of medications designed to thin the mucus that clogs her lungs and prevent inflammation. She also undergoes regular chest treatments called chest physical therapy (CPT), in which someone vigorously claps on her back and chest to dislodge mucus from her lungs and clear the airways.

"We've made it a game," says Tricia of the often uncomfortable CPT. She and her husband, Wade, tell Rebecca to cough the "gunk" out of her chest and pretend she's moving it to her pinky or toe. "She's very cooperative in doing it, but she doesn't fully understand the full impact of it."

Rebecca is lucky. She has a relatively mild form of the disease, and is doing so well she hasn't had to start taking daily antibiotics to prevent infections. Additionally, her body still makes the digestive enzymes so vital to ensuring adequate nutrition, so she can get by with just a multivitamin instead of manufactured enzymes.

But Tricia doesn't discount the benefits of the ASATS in all this, either.

"It's not a cure," she admits. Indeed, there is no cure for cystic fibrosis. But because the cleaner air inside their home helps keep Rebecca's asthma under control, says Tricia, it helps keep the girl's lungs healthier overall.

As for Smith, he's just glad he and his company were available. "The whole idea was to get this little girl some relief because she has a long struggle ahead of her," he says. "We're just glad we were able to help her out."

Debra Gordon is an award-winning health writer and the author of numerous consumer health books. She has written for Family Circle, Parents, Better Homes & Gardens, and Reader's Digest.