Health Goes Up In Smoke Grass Burning Injures Children With Cystic Fibrosis

Three-year-old Alexandria Heisel is a prisoner of grass smoke.

Her lungs already scarred by cystic fibrosis, Alexandria has been hospitalized since Sept. 8 - after a smoky haze from grass field burning in North Idaho and Spokane County settled around her Post Falls home.

“The smoke aggravates her problems. We get a lot of calls this time of year,” said her doctor, Michael McCarthy.

McCarthy is medical director of the Inland Empire Cystic Fibrosis Clinic in Spokane, a regional center where 90 children from Eastern Washington and North Idaho are being treated.

These children are the smallest and most vulnerable human statistics in a bitter tug-of-war between a $90 million grass-seed industry that says it must burn the fields each year, and clean-air advocates who want a burning ban.

Daily, nurses at Deaconess Medical Center puncture Alexandria’s tiny arms with needles that feed powerful drugs into her 27-pound body to clear her lungs.

“She trembles like a leaf when they’re sticking her,” said her mother, Trina Heisel. Her other children, ages 9 and 6, are at home with husband, Jim, while she keeps vigil at Alexandria’s bedside.

The little girl in the Sleeping Beauty nightgown can’t go home until the end of the grass burning season in late September. In the hospital, she can heal because she’s breathing smoke-free air.

“If she goes home now, it might get worse,” McCarthy said.

By Friday, Spokane County bluegrass growers had burned just over one-third of the 27,454 acres they plan to torch by Sept. 30. In Idaho, about 16,000 of 25,200 acres have been burned.

Trina Heisel said she is “just a mom” and not an activist.

But after watching Alexandria suffer during three seasons of grass smoke, Heisel is furious.

“Words cannot express how angry I am,” she said through tears in Alexandria’s hospital room.

Grass growers say they work hard to keep most of the smoke away from urban areas, and they downplay potential health risks.

In a meeting last week with Gov. Mike Lowry, John Cornwall, the head of the Intermountain Grass Growers’ Association, said grass smoke doesn’t hurt people.

He suggested area residents who have problems with grass smoke should “wear masks” during the burning season.

That won’t work for Alexandria and others with pulmonary disease.

A mask can’t block the tiny grass smoke particles that creep into homes and lungs, said Yvonne Bucklin of the American Lung Association of Washington.

Recent studies in 21 U.S. cities found that when small particulates increase, hospitals admit more people for respiratory distress - and more deaths occur within the next few days.

The Heisels thought they’d escaped the smoke by moving to Post Falls from Twin Lakes in August 1994. They were wrong.

“You can’t get away from it in this whole region,” Trina Heisel said.

Now, they are in a race against time for Alexandria’s health. The parents of children with cystic fibrosis have been told a cure for the genetic killer is only a few years away.

“We are frantic to keep our children healthy until that day. Every time they burn fields, they are preventing that,” Heisel said.

The routine medical costs of cystic fibrosis can be staggering. Flare-ups during grass burning season add to those costs.

Pollutants scar vulnerable lung tissue, causing the lungs to fill up with liquid.

“This is a very expensive disease,” McCarthy said.

The bill for Alexandria’s hospitalization could approach $25,000, a Deaconess spokeswoman said.

McCarthy and other lung specialists say these public health costs have been largely overlooked in the grass burning debate.

“It’s my long-term experience that people worsen when the grass burning season arrives,” said Dr. Scott Bradley, a pulmonary specialist at the Rockwood Clinic in Spokane.

“We can anticipate that our office calls and hospitalizations will be increased during this period,” he said.

Letters from Bradley and eight other area physicians reporting increased health problems, complaints and hospitalizations during grass burning season were given last week to Lowry.

Heisel plans to testify later this year at a Department of Ecology hearing on the controversy. She’ll say that industry profits shouldn’t take precedence over children’s lives.

“How do you put a price tag on someone’s lungs?” she asked.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (2 Color)