Related MediaFeb 09, 2021 12:35:19 IST
When Dr. Stanley Fineman started out as an allergist in Atlanta, he told patients that they should start taking their medications and prepare for the adverse effects of the pollen season around St. Patrick’s Day. That was about 40 years ago. Now he wants them to start around St. Valentine’s Day. Across the United States and Canada, pollen season begins 20 days earlier and pollen loads are 21 percent higher since 1990 and a large chunk of that is due to global warming, a new study found in magazine on Monday Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
Since 1990, about half of the earliest pollen season can be attributed to climate change – mainly from the warmer temperatures – but also from the carbon dioxide that feeds plants, says the lead author Bill Anderegg. But since the 2000s, about 65 per cent of earlier pollen seasons can be blamed on warming and around eight per cent of the pollen burden may be due to climate change.
While other studies have shown that the North American allergy season is getting longer and worse, this is the most complete data with 60 reporting stations and the first to make the necessary and accurate numbers. which could affect what is happening to human – induced climate change, experts said.
“This is a clear example of climate change here and it’s in every breath we take,” said lead author Bill Anderegg, a biologist and climate scientist at the University of Utah, which has “Real allergies.”
Chris Downs, a 32-year mechanical engineer in St. Louis, already having sinus problems, headaches and worse than red-legged eyes – and his Facebook friends in the area tell him they feel the same way. He said the allergies, which started 22 years ago, usually strike in March, but this year and last, they were already in early February, along with blooms of trees and flowers outside. .
“As a kid I didn’t see anything starting to grow in February, now I see a handful of years like that,” Downs said.
As the Earth gets warmer, spring begins earlier 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, the study said.
“This is clearly warming temperatures and more carbon dioxide is sending more pollen into the air,” Anderegg said. Trees spray the grains that cause allergies earlier than grass, he said, but scientists are not sure why that is true. Just look at cherry blossoms opening several days earlier in Japan and Washington, DC, he said.
Some of the biggest changes are happening in Texas, Anderegg said. The Southwest and Southwest get a pollen season about 1.3 days earlier each year, while it comes about 1.1 days earlier in the West, he said. The northern Midwest gets an allergy season about 0.65 days earlier in the year, and it comes 0.33 days earlier in the year in the southeast. In Canada, researchers in Alaska and the Northeast did not see a statistically significant trend.
Anderegg said his team was aware that parks and plants in cities were becoming greener. They performed a standard precision calculation that scientists have developed to see if changes in nature can be caused by the rise of heat-capturing gases from burning coal, oil and natural gas. They compared what is happening now with computer simulations of an unheated Earth with humans and carbon dioxide rising in the air.
Since 1990, about half of the earlier pollen season can be attributed to climate change – mostly from the warmer temperatures – but also from the carbon dioxide that feeds plants, Anderegg said. . But since the 2000s, about 65 percent of earlier pollen seasons on warming can be blamed, he said. About eight percent of the extra pollen burden can be attributed to climate change, he said.
Dr Fineman, who was president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and was not part of the study, said that this makes sense and fits in with what he sees: “Pollen to actually follows the temperature. There is no question. ”
While doctors and scientists knew that an earlier allergic season was occurring, so far no one had conducted formal climate studies to help understand why, an environmental health professor said. University of Washington Kristie Ebi was not part of the study. This can help scientists estimate the number of allergies and asthma cases “that may be the result of climate change,” she said.
This is not just about sniffles.
“We should be careful about pollen season because pollen is an important risk factor for allergic diseases such as hay fever and elevated asthma,” said University of Maryland environmental health professor Amir Sapkota, who was not part of the study. “Asthma costs the U.S. economy about $ 80 billion in terms of treatment and loss of productivity. A longer pollen season therefore poses a real risk to allergy sufferers as well as the U.S. economy. ”
Sapkota recently found a correlation between early spring onset and increased risk in asthma hospitals. One study found that students perform worse on tests because of pollen levels, Anderegg said.
Gene Longenecker, a hazard geographer who recently returned to Alabama, did not suffer from pollen allergies until he moved to Atlanta. Then he moved to Colorado: “Every summer it was just a headache and big stuff like that and (I) I started doing an allergy test and found out, well, I’m allergic to the everything in Colorado – at least trees, grass and pollen, herbs. ”