The city of Ostrava is famous throughout the Czech Republic for its residents’ respiratory problems, with some scientists contending that Ostrava’s children suffer from the world’s highest rates of asthma. Activists blame Ostrava’s steelworks, whose management, in turn, suggests that local residents should do more to improve their own health. This chapter examines how childhood asthma gets cast as a citizenship issue, inspiring national debate over whether the state is the ultimate guarantor of citizens’ rights. I argue that by drawing on prevalent tropes about working-class labor and the need to protect vulnerable children, popular representations of Ostrava’s woes portray...