A new study released on Monday is the latest to suggest that climate change is already making people’s lives worse, this time for those allergic to pollen. The findings indicate that the pollen season in North America has grown considerably longer and that pollen has become more abundant over the past three decades, due in part to warmer weather.
There are different types of pollen from plants and trees that become prevalent at different times of the year. But normally, the pollen season starts in the early spring and runs through the summer and early fall. These months are associated with an increase in seasonal allergies, also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis. Patients have symptoms similar to colds, such as a stuffy or runny nose, watery eyes and an itchy nose and roof of the mouth.
The study researchers analyzed data from pollen counting stations in the United States and Canada, spanning between 1990 and 2018. During those years, they found that the pollen season has changed significantly. Compared to 1990, the average pollen season in an area now starts about 20 days earlier, lasts 10 days longer and pumps 21% more pollen. Although this change has been observed everywhere, areas like Texas and the Midwest United States have seen the largest increases in total pollen over these years.
Some studies have found evidence in the laboratory that higher temperatures should lead to worse pollen seasons. Others have foreseen that certain allergy-causing plants, such as ragweed, will spread more in the coming decades. But the new discoveries, Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is one of the first polls to explicitly link climate change to worse pollen stations and to suggest that it is making things worse here and now.
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“Our results indicate that man-made climate change has already worsened pollen seasons in North America,” wrote the authors.
Climate change is not the only factor that is making pollen season another nightmare for allergy sufferers in recent years, they noted. But according to their model, climate change is likely to be the main contributor to about half the additional days seen over that time, along with 8% of the heaviest pollen counts. They also found that climate change has made a major contribution to the pollen season over the years, which is not exactly a good omen for what is to come.
“Climate change is likely to have an even greater impact on pollen stations and respiratory health in the near future,” study author William Anderegg, biologist at the University of Utah, he told Gizmodo by email. “We saw in our study that the impacts of climate change were more pronounced in the period 2003-2018 compared to the entire period 1990-2018. So, at least in the next two decades, we very much hope that this trend and health impacts will continue ”.
Of course, a lot more pollen each year is not the only thing that climate change threatens to bring when it comes to human health. In the United States, experts fear that longer, warmer seasons increase the risk of numerous health problems, tick-borne diseases like Lyme disease for heart attacks and heat stroke for the spread of tropical diseases, as warming allows spread pole.