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Among the many disasters that climate change is causing around the world, scientists have identified a more personal one: it worsens the allergy season.
That is the message of a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers have found a strong link between global warming and the pollen seasons, which will make many of us dread spring a bit more.
According to the new document, the combination of warming air and higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has caused pollen seasons to start in North America since 1990 about 20 days earlier, on average, and a 21% increase in pollen.
Scientists have suggested for some time that the season is getting longer and more horrible, and new research is providing more details and estimates of the part of global warming responsible for the greatest misery. They concluded that climate change was responsible for about half of the pollen season trend and 8% of the increase in pollen counts. In addition, the trend of increasing pollen counts, according to the researchers, is accelerating.
The most pronounced effects were seen in Texas, the Midwest, and the Southeast, said William Anderegg, assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah and lead author of the new study. The effects were less evident in the northern United States, including New England and the Great Lakes states. The greatest increases in pollen come from trees, as opposed to grasses and weeds, he said.
The researchers used techniques from attribution science, which is commonly used to indicate how worse extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, or the amount of rain a hurricane brings are. ‘they wouldn’t have been in a world without climate change.
Applying this branch of science to pollen was a new and welcome idea, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. “It’s a great job,” she says. “There has been very little research on the application of detection and attribution analysis to the health risks of a changing climate.”
The researchers looked at data collected from 60 long-term pollen monitoring stations in the continental United States and compared the results with various climate models to find correlations. They also attempted to rule out potential confounders, using satellite photos to determine whether changes in land use or tree growth during the study period near pollen measuring stations could have been skew the results.
“The world is a messy place,” said Dr Anderegg, with many potentially confusing influences, “but the really strong signal here, and the attribution to climate change, is compelling.”
The paper concluded that “a clearly detectable and attributable human-caused climate fingerprint on pollen loads in North America provides a powerful example of how climate change contributes to adverse health effects by worsening the pollen seasons.
Allergies aren’t just about sniffling, of course – they have serious public health effects, including asthma and other respiratory conditions. Studies have shown that students do less well in school during peak pollen season and that periods of high pollen have been associated with greater susceptibility to respiratory viruses – a worrying finding during the time of the coronavirus pandemic .
As for asthma, “it’s not just an allergy, it’s a potentially fatal disease,” said Amir Sapkota, professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland. His research suggests that the early start of the pollen season correlates with a higher risk of hospitalization for asthma. In addition, he noted, the impact of asthma is felt unevenly, with vulnerable populations living with an increased risk of serious illness due to lack of access to health care and lack of resources. to buy medicines.
Dr Ebi of the University of Washington cited figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the United States has 24.8 million people with asthma and 19 million adults have reported having had colds. hay in the past 12 months. Seven million children have had respiratory allergies during the same period. The direct costs of pediatric asthma alone were calculated at $ 5.9 billion in 2013, the latest figure cited in a 2019 study.
“This study shows that climate change is now and could affect the health of anyone with allergies or“ pollen-triggered asthma, ”she said.
Dr Anderegg suggested that more research into the effects of pollen should start with more monitoring and measurement of pollen levels; there are far fewer pollen monitoring stations than those measuring particulate matter and air quality. “We are really under-monitoring pollen as an air pollutant,” he said.
The outlook, he said, is not happy. “We expect it to get worse over the next two decades.”
Dr Anderegg added that the research was also of personal importance. “I have to take allergy meds eight months a year,” he said, “and there are still times when I’m still miserable during peak pollen season.”
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