Asthma-Proofing Your Home

Watching a child struggle to breathe during an asthma attack is frightening for any parent. So it is only natural that most moms and dads will try just about anythingincluding spending a lot of moneyto keep an attack at bay. Trouble is, more than half of U.S. parents are trying strategies that simply don't work, and wasting hundreds of dollars in the process, according to a study published last month in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The report, based on interviews with the parents of 896 asthmatic children in 10 different American cities, contained some good...