It's The Worst Allergy Season Ever, Says Science

Even with a heart of stone, allergies are affecting this guy (photo from Flickr user jason.kuffer)

We cannot even begin to tell you how many boxes of Kleenex, blister packs of Claritin, and bottles of eye droplets we go through every spring to combat the evil allergies Mother Nature throws our way. It sucks. But this year, we've been swearing it sucks harder than usual, and it turns out we were right! It IS the worst allergy season ever, and now we have SCIENCE backing it up, so excuse us while we shoot pollen-induced snot into every open space within a 30-mile radius.

Allergists are reporting a doubling and tripling of patients, and one Brooklyn doctor, Clifford Basset, had to hire three new staffers to deal with the influx of itchy-eyed new patients. "The allergy misery index is rising," said Dr. Bassett, while another MD, Dr. Boyan Hadjiev, who goes by "Dr. Sneeze," confirmed that this is "the worst season" he's seen in his seven years of practice in Manhattan. Why does it have to be like this? We knew it was a bad idea to plant a million extra trees!

Well, actually, it's not really the trees' fault. Turns out that pollen levels are so high because of all this nice weather we've been having, with no storm to wash it away. And some pollen is even being carried over from New Jersey! (Although Dr. Bassett does say that hair gel is "a pollen magnet," so we're not entirely sure why it's not all getting stuck in on the Jersey Shore.)

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By Jamie Feldmar in News on May 11, 2011 3:52 PM

Comments [rss]

Andrew Velan

just a thought... wouldn't the decline in the world's bee population have an effect on the amount of pollen circulating freely in the air? interestingly enough, I have been reading about the effect of cell phone signals and how they disorient bees which may be what is causing such a rapid decline

rose giberti

josh groban just brought me here :P

SFNY

If cities would quit planting so many male trees, incidences of allergies and asthma would decline. It seems no one ever bothered to consider what planting almost exclusively male trees would do to cities and schools surrounded by pollen producers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04...
and
http://pruned.blogspot.com/200..."In nature separate-sexed plants are usually about 50/50. Half of them are male and half are female. The female plants catch pollen from the air, remove it from circulation, and turn it into seed. Female trees are nature’s pollen traps, natural air-scrubbers. In our modern cities though, female trees and shrubs are rarely used any longer. Of the five most available street trees for sale now, four of the top five are male clones."

nicemarmot

Aren't the funky smelling ginkgoes everyone bitches about female?

I still don't know what the hell people are complaining about with them, though. They don't smell like anything to me.

k3ll3s

oh yeah, they stink. It's the fruit/nut part that smells, If you accidentally step on it or there's a whole bunch of overripe broken nuts, hold your nose because it smells like vomit

nicemarmot

Yeah, I know - my block is nothing but ginkgoes and those little fruit things coat the sidewalk. I must have stepped on them a million times, but I never smell anything. Maybe it's like asparagus pee.

Gepap

Of course, female trees can produce foul smelling chemicals and such - We can't win with all this arboreal sex going on.

MeghanButler

I've always heard that rain was actually worse for allergies because it churns everything up..

eech1234

Nah, it washes everything away. However when it gets warm again after the rains, the plants think its spring again and the cycle starts again.