Climate Change Also Making Your Allergies Worse Because Why Would It Not Do That

The Lorax hated congestion and dry eyes, too!

Behold your frenemy! Photo by Coley Christine on Unsplash

Did you know there is an actual list of Allergy Capitals by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA)? (It’s sponsored by Bayer Claritin, obviously.) Even if you don’t live in one of the top offenders (bow your head for the crown made of used tissues, Witchita!), you may have noticed that your sinuses hate you more than usual this year. You are (probably) not hallucinating: This shit is getting worse!

Take it away, Margaret Renkl of the New York Times:

Seasonal allergies are nothing new, but they’ve been worsening as the climate grows warmer. The growing season starts earlier now — in North America an average of 20 days earlier — and lasts longer, too, extending the length of time when plants are pumping pollen into the air. And the resulting misery arises not just because there’s more pollen to breathe in or because it’s around for increasingly longer seasons. At least one study has indicated that the more carbon there is in the air, the more potent the pollen itself is.

There are so many ways for air polluted by industrial chemicals to kill us, so it’s almost nice to know about a way that “fresh” air full of treegasms can also make us want to die. Renkl makes the point that there are far scarier and more dangerous threats to our safety as the result of climate change (forest fires and flooding spring to mind). Still, this is creepy as fuck:

In human beings, this all adds up to seasonal allergies that are more widespread and more severe, and it’s only going to get worse: One study predicts a 200 percent increase in pollen production by the end of this century. “In 2018, 7.7 percent of American adults experienced ‘hay fever,’” noted the science journalist Yasmin Tayag in The Atlantic last year. “By 2021, that proportion had risen to about a quarter.” The article is titled “There Is No Stopping the Allergy Apocalypse.”

Considering that various Bad Sad Environment Things they told us about in my public school actually have come to pass, I choose to believe in this Real Science, and I do not like it.

We’ve got a big population kinda-sorta-maybe inching its way out of a global respiratory pandemic, with many of us left more vulnerable to respiratory irritation and infection. Let’s grab one more insightful block quote from Margaret, shall we?

Someone who is suffering from seasonal allergies may be less able to exercise, more vulnerable to infection, less productive at work (if not actually absent), more likely to require treatment in an emergency room. Seasonal allergies have been linked to an increase in both the prevalence and severity of asthma, which is particularly worrisome for children.

Yes and yes and yes and yikes and no thank you! If you are dealing with what may be allergies, and you’d like to learn more about how doctors test for such things, here’s a helpful explainer from Yale Medicine. (It is free, and also you do not have to do business with their particular doctors to learn from this thing they made.) Take good care this season, and may your mucus be as clear as your heart desires.