A new study on Monday is the latest to suggest that climate change is already worsening people’s lives, this time for those allergic to pollen. The findings show that the pollen season in North America has become much longer and that pollen has become increasingly abundant in the last three decades, due in part to a warmer climate.
There are different types of pollen from plants and trees that become predominant at different times of the year. But usually the pollen season begins in early spring and takes place in summer and early autumn. These months are associated with an increase in seasonal allergies, also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis. Those who suffer have cold-like symptoms, such as a stuffy or runny nose, watery eyes, along with itching around the nose and roof of the mouth.
The study’s researchers analyzed data from pollen counters in the United States and Canada, which span between 1990 and 2018. In those years, they found that the pollen season had changed significantly. Compared to 1990, the average pollen season in an area now starts 20 days earlier, runs 10 days longer and pumps 21% more pollen. While this change has been seen everywhere, areas such as Texas and the Midwest have seen the largest increases in total pollen in those years.
Some studies have found evidence in the laboratory that warmer temperatures should lead to worse pollen seasons. Others have price that certain allergy-causing plants, such as ragweed, will become more prevalent in the next few decades. But the new discoveries, published In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is one of the first researches to explicitly link climate change to the worst pollen seasons 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 aggravated pollen seasons in North America,” the authors wrote.
Climate change is not the only factor that makes the pollen season a nightmare for people suffering from allergies in recent years, they noted. But according to their model, climate change is likely to be primarily responsible for about half of the added days observed during this time, along with 8% of the higher number of pollen. They also found that climate change made a greater contribution to the pollen season as the years passed, which does not predict exactly what is to come.
“Climate change is likely to have an even greater impact on pollen seasons and respiratory health in the near future,” said study author William Anderegg, a biologist. from the University of Utah, he told Gizmodo by e-mail. “We saw in our study that the impact of climate change was more pronounced in the period 2003-2018 compared to the full period 1990-2018. So, at least for the next decade or two, we highly expect this trend and the impact on health to continue. ”
Of course, much more pollen each year is not the only thing that climate change threatens to bring when it comes to human health. In the US, experts fear that longer and warmer seasons will increase the risk of many health problems due to tick-borne diseases. Lyme disease the heart attacks and heat to the spread of tropical diseases as heating allows spread poleward.