Americans received a bit of good news recently about declines in lung cancer death rates. But we have many other causes to breathe uneasy about stubborn challenges to our respiratory health.

These assaults come from many directions: Climate change, experts say, is creating warmer conditions that encourage growth of allergen-releasing plants. It also is to blame for nightmarish wildfires that fill the air with smoke and ash. Too many of us persist in smoking. We’re also vaping for the buzz from nicotine and tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the substance that produces marijuana’s high. Some young people also try still to get stoned by huffing — inhaling aerosol sprays or volatile solvents.

These factors, combined with regulatory inattention or outright hostility to environmental best practices, including efforts to reduce air pollution, are leaving more Americans vulnerable to breathing ailments such as asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, and pneumonia.

The world also has gotten a new jolt from Asia about lung health, with reports of a pneumonia-like viral infection exploding from central China and the city of Wuhan.

Earlier detection of the novel coronoavirus may have eluded doctors, who may have mistaken some of its cases for a bad bug that got even worse.

Which offers the reminder that a common,“little” seasonal bug or “minor” allergic bout can cascade quickly in worst-case settings into a chronic, debilitating, and even fatal cardiopulmonary disaster without appropriate care. That’s why it can be important to inhale even a little information about safeguarding the lungs. So, take a breath and let’s plunge ahead.