Those who are prone to asthma, he said, can have airways that are especially sensitive to irritants.
"The airways are much more susceptible to irritants than in a person without asthma, and the inflammatory response in asthmatic children is much more dramatic".
The general goals of treatment for dermatitis involve reducing symptoms, healing the skin, and preventing exposure to irritants and allergens that cause outbreaks.
Tear gas is the generic term for a group of at least 15 riot-control chemicals that disable people by exposing their lungs, skin and eyes to irritants.
As if that were not bothersome enough, some 6 to 12 hours later come the delayed symptoms: nasal congestion and a heightened sensitivity to the particular allergen and to irritants like scents and tobacco smoke.
Asthma, which affects an estimated five million people in Britain, is characterised by oversensitive airways in the lungs which react to irritants in the air such as pollution and tobacco smoke.
The drugs should not be used for chronic conditions like seasonal or persistent allergies, for breathing obstruction caused by a deviated septum or for a common syndrome called vasomotor rhinitis, an innate hypersensitivity to irritants like chemicals, pollutants or cold air.
Sergeant Sorrento, who is single and lives on Staten Island, said she counts herself among the lucky ones even as she struggles with "reactive airway disease," a condition similar to asthma involving a tendency to wheeze and cough from exposure to irritants.
But the short-term ones are nasty and lingering, and at least a few of those cases, he said, are a result of what people heard, or thought they heard, from the E.P.A. Mount Sinai has examined more than 8,000 people, many of whom still have persistent health problems like asthma, sinusitis and reactive airway disease, which makes sufferers hypersensitive to irritants in the air.
Bronchial wall thickening is the common final response of the airways to irritants.
