A variety of news sources like the Louisiana Weekly, UPI, Newsday, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times and even Matt Drudge are reporting a mysterious malady, a cough, which has begun to circulate in the Gulf Coast population.

A large number of people along the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts are developing a condition that some have dubbed “Katrina cough,” believed to be linked to mold and dust circulating after Hurricane Katrina.

Health officials say they are trying to determine how widespread the problem is. There are suggestions that it is popping up regularly among people who have returned to storm-ravaged areas, particularly New Orleans.

And New Orleans, which has a history of being particularly lethal for blacks developing asthma, bronchitis or other lung and respiratory diseases, has something new to battle in the aftermath of the storm.

(Why a history?  Scores of black slaves during colonial times would sicken easily and die before they even got to the sugar cane fields because of the damp, fetid living conditions in the swamp-ridden Crescent City and beyond. More and more slaves had to be imported to take up the burdens of the fallen.  Even in modern times, New Orleans remained before Katrina as one of the largest respiratory disease capitals in the U.S.)

Dr. Dennis Casey, one of the few ear, nose and throat doctors seeing patients in New Orleans, called the condition “very prevalent.” And Dr. Kevin Jordan, director of medical affairs at Touro Infirmary and Memorial Medical Center in downtown New Orleans, said the hospital had seen at least a 25% increase in complaints regarding sinus headaches, congestion, runny noses and sore throats since Katrina.

In most cases, Casey said, patients appear to be “allergic to the filth they are exposed to.” Those allergies make the patients more susceptible to respiratory illness, including bacterial bronchitis and sinusitis.

And that ‘filth’ are the mold-infested furnishings and insulation in hundreds of storm-weakened homes in New Orleans.  It would be different if these furnishings had been made of sterner wood and did not include chemically-pressed and -created ‘woods’, fibers and glues that pervade much of the furniture and fillers and insulation manufactured today.

Among the public, the condition is known alternately as “Katrina cough” and “Katrina’s revenge” — much to the consternation of physicians who feel the monikers paint a needlessly alarming portrait of the environment.

“It started out as a sore throat and scratchy eyes. That turned into a cold, and that turned into a cough again, and that’s where it stayed,” said Christophe Hinton, 38, who was on the way to a medical clinic Thursday to address an illness that had hung around for weeks, impervious to over-the-counter cold medicine.

Hinton, who lives in the French Quarter, drove a taxi before Katrina but now is working with a chain-saw crew, cutting up toppled trees that need to be hauled away.

“Everybody’s got this thing,” he said. “Everybody I know.”

Among healthy people, the condition is not considered serious and can generally be treated with antihistamines, nasal sprays or, in the case of bacterial infections, antibiotics.

I know myself that I had to don a mask to go through my fire-damaged apartment a couple of years ago.  Yet several weeks later, I still developed a cough whenever I came near or handled my own property in storage.  Not only fires but flooding can allow the chemical breakdown of certain items and materials which in turn can cause illnesses.

Dr. Peter DeBlieux, an associate medical director of the Spirit of Charity, a MASH-style clinic that has been set up in downtown New Orleans, suggests that this condition could be lethal for patients who are already suffering from respiratory diseases, who are organ-transplant survivors, and who are undergoing chemotherapy.

Imagine how it would be if this bird flu was also on the march at the same time the rebuilding and clearance of the houses and mold was going on.

Unfortunately, the message for chronic sufferers, many health activists say, isn’t getting across.

“People are going back in and getting sick,” said Wilma Subra, a Louisiana environmental consultant and activist. “They are letting people in without any information or any warning.”

Health officials in fact have attempted to warn people with certain conditions to think twice before returning to New Orleans. State and federal officials have handed out hundreds of thousands of fliers and have taped warnings about mold to front doors in badly damaged neighborhoods.

But these are warnings about benzene in areas where there were oil spills.  The government has issued repeated, but possibly erroneous public assurances that the air quality in areas affected by Katrina is safe. Few tests have been made of the airborne mold that appears to be causing much of the problem. Additionally, many state and Federal officials are convinced there is little need to spend money for additional tests because the contamination is confined to flooded, now locked houses.

But some in the New Orleans area are developing respiratory conditions without going inside badly damaged buildings or homes, Casey said.  

“People who are actually going into the destroyed residences are having a more severe time of it,” he said. “But I’ve also seen some patients who have not actually engaged in that but have started having symptoms just after driving through some of the affected areas.”

Yall still want to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras before all this stuff is cleared away or the problem solved or under control?