THE EFFECTS ON OUR HEALTH
The new study matches what allergist John James saw first-hand. When he moved to Colorado 25 years ago, allergy season was March through April. But since then, this trend has changed. “I’ve seen patients come in earlier and earlier and ask me, ‘Why are my symptoms lasting so long? Will it ever end?’ says John James, who offers consultations to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Many studies now show that these increasingly virulent pollen seasons pose a threat to public health worldwide. Students with allergies have lower grades than their comrades; the adult productivity at work suffers when they have hay fever. Moreover, it has been established that the days with the highest pollen concentrations, the emergency services see an influx of asthmatic patients. And that’s not to mention the financial cost to the healthcare system.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2050, half of the world’s population will have contracted at least one allergic disorder. Currently, 10 to 30% of adults and up to 40% of children are affected. This increase is not only due to the ever-increasing concentration of pollen, but also to the many ways that certain polluting chemicals have to interact with them.
The polluting substances destroy the cell wall of the pollen, they “break the pollen grains, which are relatively large, into particles measuring less than one micron that can sink further into the lungs and prove more dangerous for patients”, explains Isabella’s Mother-Maesano, professor of environmental epidemiology at the University of Montpellier. Moreover, pollutants can make the pollen more capable of eliciting an allergic reaction. Laboratory studies show that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the production of pollen containing more allergenic proteins, and therefore the appearance of antibodies causing an allergic reaction.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ?
According to Allison Steiner, this new study “is a first step towards developing better instruments to understand how pollen could evolve in the future and help people better protect themselves against the effects this has on their health. But challenges remain, and there is still work to do, the data is still sparse. And then, tracking pollen is a laborious task that often requires a trained person to manually count pollen grains and identify them.
“We measure and monitor pollen much less than most other air pollutants, when we need this data to establish long-term pollen trends,” laments William Anderegg. But there is still good news: there may be solutions on the horizon. Several companies are working on artificial intelligence techniques to automate counting and make it more efficient. Also, with this research, we may see weekly pollen projections appear in the future similar to the air weather we have now.
According to William Anderegg, this could “build local and regional capacities to deal with pollen changes and minimize their harmfulness to people’s health. »