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When Dr Stanley Fineman started out as an allergist in Atlanta, he told patients they should start taking their meds and prepare for the dripping, sneezing onslaught of pollen season around St. Patrick’s Day. That was about 40 years ago. Now he’s telling them to start around Valentine’s Day.
In the United States and Canada, the pollen season starts 20 days earlier and pollen loads have been 21% higher since 1990 and much of that is due to global warming, a new study published in the Monday journal The Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
While other studies have shown that the allergy season in North America is lengthening and worsening, this is the most comprehensive data with 60 reporting stations and the first to perform the necessary and detailed calculations that could attribute what’s happening to man-made climate change, experts said.
“It’s a clear example that climate change is here and it’s in every breath we breathe,” said lead author Bill Anderegg, a biologist and climatologist at the University of Utah, who also suffers. “very serious allergies”.
Chris Downs, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer in St. Louis, already has sinus problems, headaches and worst of all itchy red eyes – and his Facebook friends in the area tell him they feel the same thing. He said allergies, which started 22 years ago, typically hit in March, but this year and last year were already present in early February, with blossoms from trees and flowers to outside.
“As a kid I never saw anything start to bloom in February, now I see a handful of years like that,” Downs said.
The warmer the Earth, the earlier spring begins for plants and animals, especially those that release pollen. Add to that the fact that trees and plants produce more pollen when they receive carbon dioxide, according to the study.
“It’s clearly the warming temperatures and more carbon dioxide that puts more pollen in the air,” Anderegg said. Trees spit out allergic particles earlier than grasses, he said, but scientists don’t know why. Just watch the cherry blossoms open days earlier in Japan and Washington, DC., he said.
Some of the biggest changes are happening in Texas, Anderegg said. The southern and southern Midwest experiences the pollen season about 1.3 days earlier each year, while it arrives about 1.1 days earlier in the West, he said. The northern Midwest experiences an allergy season about 0.65 days earlier per year, and it’s happening 0.33 days earlier in the year in the Southeast. In Canada, Alaska and the Northeast, researchers could not see a statistically significant trend.
Anderegg said his team took into account the fact that city parks and factories were becoming greener. They made standard detailed calculations that scientists developed to see if the changes in nature can be attributed to the increase in heat-trapping gases from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. They compared what is happening now to computer simulations of an Earth with no human-caused warming or increased carbon dioxide in the air.
Since 1990, about half of the first pollen season can be attributed to climate change – mainly because of warmer temperatures – but also carbon dioxide that feeds on plants, Anderegg said. But since the 2000s, about 65% of previous pollen seasons can be attributed to warming, he said. About 8% of the increase in pollen load can be attributed to climate change, he said.
Dr Fineman, Past President of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and who was not part of the study, said it made sense and is consistent with what he is seeing: “Pollen really tracks temperature. There is no question.
While doctors and scientists knew the allergy season was coming, so far no one has done official climate attribution studies to help understand why, said Kristie Ebi, professor of environmental health. at the University of Washington, which was not part of the study. This can help scientists estimate how many cases of allergies and asthma “could be due to climate change,” she said.
It’s not all about sniffles.
“We should be concerned about the pollen season because pollen is a significant risk factor for allergic diseases such as hay fever and exacerbation of asthma,” said Amir Sapkota, professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, which was not part of the study. “Asthma costs the US economy approximately $ 80 billion a year in terms of treatment and lost productivity. Thus, a longer pollen season represents real threats for people with allergies as well as for the American economy.
Sapkota recently found a correlation between the early onset of spring and increased risk of asthma hospitalizations. Students do less well on tests, study finds due to pollen levels, Anderegg said.
Gene Longenecker, a hazard geographer who recently returned to Alabama, didn’t really suffer from pollen allergies until he moved to Atlanta. Then he moved to Colorado: “Every summer it was just overwhelming headaches and big things like that and (I) started doing allergy tests and found out that, well, I’m allergic to everything in Colorado – at least trees, herbs. and pollens, weeds.
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Read the Associated Press articles on climate issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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