Word: pollenation
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...hand. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of U.S. children under 18 with a reported food allergy jumped 18% from 1997 to 2007, and the number of children hospitalized for food allergies has nearly quadrupled in recent years. So forget pet dander and pollen. "In this day and age, allergy in pediatrics is all about food, food, food," says Dr. Allen Lapey, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Each year, 30,000 people in the U.S. are rushed to the emergency room suffering from an allergic reaction to food. And while these allergies...
...good for agriculture - though warming temperatures and changing rain patterns in a warmer world might wipe out that advantage. But there are no unalloyed gifts from climate change. Recent research suggests that global warming will also exacerbate respiratory allergies, as higher CO2 concentrations lead to vast increases in ragweed pollen production. "There's no denying there's a change," says Paul Ratner, an immunologist with the American College of Allergies. "It's definitely bad news for people who have allergies." (Hear Ratner talk about the connection between warming and asthma on this week's Greencast...
...World Health Organization estimates that 300 million people globally have asthma, with 250,000 dying from the disease each year. That rate is up considerably over the past few decades, and scientists say a number of factors could be at work. One clear reason is rising levels of ragweed pollen - which can be connected directly to rising levels of CO2. Researchers have shown repeatedly that elevated levels of CO2 stimulate weeds to produce pollen out of proportion with their growth rates - meaning you get more pollen per plant, which means more allergies. Even worse, it seems that the weediest species...
Longer growing seasons in a warmer world may further worsen allergies. A study in September's Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported data from 1982 to 2001 showing that, for example, increasingly early pollination of the European olive in Spain led to higher overall pollen counts, similar to what is found in warmer parts of the Mediterranean; comparable outcomes can be expected in other temperate parts of the world as climate change kicks in. A similar effect will also be felt in the northward shift of what is known as the hardiness zones - meaning that northern countries where allergies...
...causes of allergies and respiratory disorders are complex, and scientists cannot predict exactly how much impact climate change will have on their global rates. But the recent data - records on pollen counts rarely go back more than 20 years - certainly would indicate that warming will only make things worse. So, what can be done to help millions of sneezing, watery-eyed patients? As allergy sufferers already know, not a whole lot. But any action taken to control rising CO2 levels might at least help stem the increase in global allergy rates. So far, the global asthma epidemic shows no signs...