This story was originally published on September 28, 2020, by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning.
Elisha Bouret’s 3-year-old son Miguel asks for his asthma inhaler more often these days.
Over the previous few months, as fewer cars took to the roadways near the family’s west Bronx home during the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, he rarely needed the pump, she said.
And while Bouret cannot prove it, she suspects the return of constant motor vehicle emissions from local thoroughfares — including the Cross Bronx and Major Deegan Expressways — may be triggering her son’s symptoms.
“Once the pandemic started and there were less cars in the street, my son had not had an asthma attack,” Bouret, a mother of two, told THE CITY. “Ironically, now that the outside has opened again, my son has had to use his pump a little bit more.”
His symptoms have been severe enough to warrant hospitalization four times in his young life, said Bouret — he even sp... Read more
