Itchy? Air Pollution May Be Making It Worse

Short Wave

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Short Wave producer Hannah Chinn has adult-onset eczema. They're not the only one. Up to ten percent of people in the United States have it, according to the National Eczema Association — and its prevalence is increasing. Despite its ubiquity, a lot about this skin condition remains a mystery.
So today, Hannah's getting answers. In this encore episode, they sat down with Raj Fadadu, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Diego, to ask: What is eczema? What triggers it in the first place? And might climate change make it worse sometimes?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:15.7	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:22.1	Hey, shortwavers, it's Hannah Chin. I'm a producer, which means you usually hear my name
0:27.2	in the credits, but today, today I'm behind the mic, because for the majority of my adult life,
0:34.4	I've had eczema. Up to 10% of adults in the U.S. do. So if you're one of them,
0:41.0	you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you don't, eczema is a condition that makes
0:46.1	patches of your skin rough, dry, and overwhelmingly itchy, sometimes to the point of losing sleep.
0:52.8	It's not contagious, but its prevalence has been increasing over the past few decades.
0:59.4	And I'm not the only person I know who has it.
1:03.1	My mom has had it for way longer.
1:06.0	It probably started before I was five before kindergarten.
1:08.7	It was a rash that was weepy and and it would sting if it got wet.
1:13.9	And so, like, at night, my parents would put some kind of cream on it, and I would have to sleep with my arms above my head.
1:21.3	As she got older, she tried all kinds of things, creams, lotions, topical steroids.
1:27.2	You can actually see it in a lot of our family
1:29.2	pictures. It's this red, angry rash on her face and arms that just wouldn't go away.
1:37.7	And around the time that I was 12 or 13, she had a tipping point.
1:42.6	It was all over my face and I looked like lobster woman.
1:45.5	And basically I was realizing it was getting worse and worse despite any medical intervention.
1:50.9	Until one night, she spent away from her house and then kind of like magic.
	...

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