Allergy season in the South will just keep getting worse, study finds. Here’s why
Pollen season is getting longer — and could keep getting worse for those with allergies, new research suggests.
The Southeast U.S. is expected to receive the worst of the increase, as scientists predict that by later this century, the levels of pollen released into the air will ramp up more in the region than any other place in the country, according to the study published March 15.
To come up with the findings, scientists from the University of Michigan used modeling and climate data to show how much pollen could surround us in the years 2081 to 2100. Though that’s far in the future, past research has found that pollen seasons already are getting longer — and there doesn’t appear to be much relief in sight.
One such study found that the start of pollen seasons in the 1990s happened up to 22 days earlier when compared to pollen seasons in the 1970s.
Scientists say temperatures help determine when pollen will come and how long it will stick around.
“Because pollen emission is closely associated with environmental drivers, climate change could influence pollen emission and consequently the incidence of allergic disease,” scientists wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications. “Longer and more intense pollen seasons have been observed over the past few decades, which is expected to contribute to the exacerbation and aggravation of pollen allergic rhinitis and asthma.”
Allergic rhinitis — with symptoms that include sneezing, runny nose and itchy eyes — can happen after a person comes in contact with pollen released from plants, according to the National Library of Medicine.
In the pollen study, “simulations indicate that increasing pollen and longer seasons will increase the likelihood of seasonal allergies.” One model showed that by the end of the century, springtime pollen could come 10 to 40 days earlier and last for almost three additional weeks than it did in pollen seasons from 1995 to 2014, “increasing the annual pollen emissions over the US by 16–40%,” the University of Michigan said in a news release.
While more research is needed to determine possible impacts in the real word, researchers said the findings are a launching pad for future investigations.
“Overall, this is an incredibly important study,” Bill Anderegg of the University of Utah, who wasn’t an author on the project, told the Associated Press. “It tells us that the historical trends of longer and more severe pollen seasons are likely to continue, driven by climate change, and this will absolutely have substantial health consequences in allergies and asthma for Americans.”
The intensity is expected to be most noticeable in the South — including all or parts of several states such as Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, according to a study map. Results show the region “has a larger pollen production increase (40% increase with temperature and precipitation) compared to the other parts of the nation,” according to study co-author Yingxiao Zhang.
That’s partly because some species could start to have their pollen seasons overlap, increasing the amount of the sneeze-inducing powdery substance that enters the air.
Oak and cypress trees — “the dominant pollen emitting species” in the area — are also expected to “have large increases in pollen production with climate change,” Zhang told McClatchy News in an email.
Those aren’t the only kinds of plants that could make people with allergies miserable.
“With warmer projected temperatures in the south and decreased precipitation intensity in the Southwestern US, the future maximum emissions for (grass) are about 30% greater in the south than in the north ...” scientists said. “For (ragweed), the pollen maximum emission in the southern latitudes is also slightly higher (10%) than northern latitudes.”
In addition to focusing on 15 types of pollen, scientists considered precipitation and carbon dioxide levels that could exist by the year 2100.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Allergy season in the South will just keep getting worse, study finds. Here’s why."
