Racism sucks the life out of people, literally and figuratively. After a high-profile case like the one of Trayvon Martin — a trial where race was conspicuously left out — there’s a lot of attention placed on racial issues yet nothing seems to change in America.

On the heels of a study that concluded that African-Americans who are hyper-aware of race suffer from high blood-pressure, a new study linked adult onset asthma with racism.

According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported more frequent experiences of racism had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women who reported less frequent experiences.

The questionnaire study that followed more than 38,000 black women from 1997 thru 2011 asked participants to provide information about their experience with perceived “everyday” racism, such as being followed in retail stores, and “lifetime” racism, such as racial profiling in housing, jobs, or by the authorities.

The results illuminated how pervasive racism is in the minds of black women and how its accompanying stress brought on adult-onset asthma.

“This is the first prospective study to show an association between experiences of racism and adult-onset asthma,” said Coogan. “Racism is a significant stressor in the lives of African American women, and our results contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating that experiences of racism can have adverse effects on health.” The hypothesized mechanism linking experiences of racism to asthma incidence is stress and its physiological consequences, particularly effects on the immune system and the airways.  “Given the high prevalence of both asthma and of experiences of racism in African Americans, the association is of public health importance,” she added.

Whether Fox News pundits, Mike Adams, or black racial apologists want to deny race as a factor or not, racism is real and it effects folks’ health negatively.