The founder of Open Airways said prevention was better than cure when it came to chronic breathing problems like asthma.

Liz Boden also told Hamilton Rotarians on Tuesday that the deadly and debilitating lung condition was reaching global epidemic proportions.

?Probably 8,000 to 9,000 people in Bermuda have asthma,? Mrs. Boden said. ?The problem is huge. Did you know that one in four young children have asthma in Bermuda, one in ten adults? And it is getting much, much worse. It is reaching epidemic levels.

?We can?t just blame the weather and the flowers and the mould. There have always been those things in Bermuda. So we have to look at what has changed.?

Mrs. Boden ? a paediatric nurse who has personally suffered five life-threatening asthma attacks ? said asthma was getting worse in rich countries around the world because of changes in diet, vehicle emissions, home security and chemicals in the home.

She said one of the greatest possible reasons for the asthma increase was poor diet. Studies showed the average child in the UK and Canada got five portions of fruit and vegetables a week, rather than five per day.

Exhaust fumes from Bermuda?s 52,000 vehicles also did not help asthmatics, she said.

?Most developed countries have had emission controls for 25 years,? she said. ?We are all breathing that in and for those of you working in Hamilton you are getting that nicely recycled through your air conditioning systems all day. Pretty scary.?

An increase in crime also brought social changes that affected asthmatics, she said, for instance children did not exercise outside enough and homes were locked up all day.

?You are looking at a screen basically. You are not getting fresh air. The most dangerous air is actually in the house, not outside,? Ms Boden said.

She said Bermuda was also ?the mould capital of the world? and encouraged children to get out and enjoy beaches all year round, not just on May 24, Easter and Cup Match.

Chemicals from home air fresheners left a baby gasping for breath last week, she said.

?Just last week I delivered a nebuliser to a home of parents of a baby of ten months. She called me in distress and said the doctor had tried all the treatments but the child was living in the hospital. I went in and was nearly knocked over by the smell of vanilla.?

She said there were two ?plug-in? deodorant sprays in every room in the house and after she pulled them all out the wall, she was convinced the baby got better. Some air freshener sprays not only contain chemicals that hurt your airways, she said, but may even cause depression in women.

?Look at the next time you go to the supermarket, the line of cleaning products is much bigger than the line of fresh vegetables,? she said. ?There is a spray for every corner of your body and every corner of your home.

?Nobody need suffer from asthma. Asthma is easy to control. You have got to get the right diagnosis and there are some fabulous treatments around,? she said.

Nor was it necessary to constantly pump away from a pocket-sized ?blue inhaler?, because if a sufferer was constantly ?puffing? it meant their asthma was not under control.

?The well-controlled asthmatic never uses a blue inhaler. They have it on standby just in case but they never use it.?

Instead she suggested a ?brown,? ?orange? or ?red? inhaler from the doctor that could be used once a day.

?They put a little coating in the airways to say, ?Go out amongst all those things that your lungs don?t like, and we?ll promise not to have asthma symptoms.??

While admissions to the hospital for asthma have dropped by 65 percent since Open Airways began, thousands of people were still getting sent to emergency, she added.