Asthma is caused by poor air quality. In the last decade, the number o

Question

Asthma is caused by poor air quality. In the last decade, the number of asthma attacks has increased, even though there has been no increase in the number of bad air quality days or in the number of people diagnosed with asthma during this time. 
 
Which of the following, if true, best explains the increase in asthma attacks? 
 
(A) The number of people living in urban areas, where air pollution is typically worse, has increased significantly over the last decade. 
 (B) In the last decade, buildings have become increasingly airtight, allowing pollutants to accumulate more easily indoors. 
 (C) The criteria for diagnosing asthma have become more stringent in the last decade, resulting in fewer people being officially diagnosed. 
 (D) A new medication introduced in the last decade has allowed people with asthma to engage in more strenuous outdoor activities. 
 (E) Public awareness of asthma and its symptoms has increased over the last decade, leading to more people reporting asthma attacks.

chris1223 · Answer

hi can someone pls help with this question? thank you

Matty101 · Answer

(B) resolves the paradox by highlighting the difference between outdoor and indoor air quality. Although the number of bad air quality days has remained the same, this statistic only reflects outdoor conditions. In recent years, buildings have become more airtight, which allows indoor pollutants to build up. As a result, indoor air quality has worsened, even if outdoor pollution has not changed. This explains why asthma attacks have increased despite no rise in the number of diagnosed cases. The people who already have asthma are now exposed to more concentrated indoor pollutants, which raises their risk of experiencing attacks.

hr1212 · Answer

This is quite an interesting question. My 2 cents on this one -

Poor air quality -> Asthma 
 Asthma attack ↑ <-> Air quality and No. of people diagnosed x No change

How?

So we know that air quality has not degraded and even no. of people diagnosed is unchanged then what caused this increase?

I couldn't come up with too many interesting ideas during pre-thinking so went directly to the options -

A. The number of people living in urban areas, where air pollution is typically worse, has increased significantly over the last decade. -> Trap, this is indirectly attacking one of the premise because if more people moved towards urban area, then that should have led to more people being diagnosed by asthma if the air quality was worse there, but there are no changes to those figures, hence this statement is incorrect.

B. In the last decade, buildings have become increasingly airtight, allowing pollutants to accumulate more easily indoors. -> Sounds irrelevant, but seems to have some subtle connectivity b/w increase in cases and this phenomenon. It's giving one more reason apart from the two which were considered in the argument (quality and diagnosis). Can this lead to increase in cases? Not sure yet but it's quite possible like more indoor pollution could lead to more cases and its not addressed by the given two parameters, so let's keep it.

C. The criteria for diagnosing asthma have become more stringent in the last decade, resulting in fewer people being officially diagnosed. -> I liked this thought for a sec, but then again it required a little more wishful thinking as the argument is saying that the no. of diagnosis cases are unchanged and even if the diagnosis was a bit stricter, then there would be some people being missed out from diagnosis but still the actual number of cases should still be almost same, so what then caused the increase in attacks? Can't answer it, so this too is incorrect.

D. A new medication introduced in the last decade has allowed people with asthma to engage in more strenuous outdoor activities. -> Does strenuous outdoor activities cause increase in asthma attacks? Maybe or maybe not. But this requires me to pull in outside knowledge to connect the dots and what I know for sure is that only poor air quality causes asthma. And at best this could even contradict the argument because prescribed medications would in most cases reduce attacks rather than increase it.

E. Public awareness of asthma and its symptoms has increased over the last decade, leading to more people reporting asthma attacks. -> Close but a weak possibility. The catch here is the word - 'reporting'. Is the argument focusing on the cases being reported more now or on the increase of actual no. of cases? Unless otherwise stated, I would assume that this is too weak of a connectivity and it's at best a speculation.

If I have to choose b/w B and E, then I would prefer B over E here because that's more solid of a reason identifying a valid cause rather than relying on a hypothesis like the one in E.

Asthma is caused by poor air quality. In the last decade, the number o

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Asthma is caused by poor air quality. In the last decade, the number o

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