For most of her life, Lindy O. gave little thought to the health of her lungs. Her family did not smoke or suffer from any chronic lung diseases. But when she contracted COVID-19 in 2020, she began to reexamine just how much her lungs had actually been through. “Before I got COVID I was in really great shape. I loved working out, especially doing HIIT training and weightlifting. But once I had recovered, even though it was a mild case, I noticed I was having trouble just getting up the stairs without struggling to breathe,” Lindy recalls.
“It made me think back to just how much my lungs have gone through throughout my life.”
Lindy grew up in rural Alabama, which had a lot of green space and fresh air. But there were also several large factories in the area. “Both my parents worked in factories, and I never thought anything of it as a kid,” she said. “But when I went to college, I learned about the negative impacts that those factories not only had on the workers, but on the communities around them, like the one I grew up in.”
Fresh out of college, she worked in a plastic tile factory herself for a few months. At that time, she lived between a military arsenal and a landfill. Though it was less than a year, Lindy was aware that her proximity to these toxins may cause permanent damage to her lungs. This is another reason Lindy was interested in joining the American Lung Association Lung Health Cohort Research Study. “I am so excited to be in the study because not only are they measuring individual behaviors, but they are looking at how residential and occupational environmental exposures may impact my lungs over time.”
How It Works
Her involvement with the study began by going into a study site local to her for a baseline assessment. This included a low-dose CT scan of the lungs, a blood draw, a urine sample and a nasal swab. Then, she was asked to wear an activity monitor, similar to a Fitbit, that measured her sleep and physical activity over a seven-day period. “They told me that I still have very healthy lungs, which is good to know, and is an important aspect of this study since they are hoping to follow healthy millennials,” she said.
Soon after, she was asked to take an at-home spirometry test, to measure her lung function. This is something that she will be asked to do, through an app, every four months for the next five years. “After the initial assessment, it has been very easy. I just get an email to send in my spirometry test results every four months,” she said.
Why It Is Important
The Lung Health Cohort is groundbreaking because it is following 4,000 healthy adults, age 25 to 35, in the hopes of identifying the factors involved in predicting and preventing lung disease.
For Lindy, getting people to understand the harms hidden in the air around them is pivotal. In recent years, we have become more aware of the impact that climate change is having on the environment, but we often don’t think the impact it is having on our health. “I think this study can help us reframe our lens to think about what environmental factors mean for our health and the communities that are disproportionately burdened by them.”
Learn more about the Lung Health Cohort at Lung.org/lung-study.
(IRB00236497 | Principal Investigator: Dr. Elizabeth Sugar) on our website.
Blog last updated: March 13, 2024
