Allergy symptoms got you down? Blame pollen AND air pollution. » Yale Climate Connections

Pollen, Air Pollution, and Allergies: The Impact of Climate Change

You are not alone if every pollen season feels worse than the year before.

Pollen season is starting earlier and lasting longer, and even those previously unaffected are noticing its impacts. Across the globe, allergic reactions to pollen have increased in frequency and severity over the last several decades.

The evidence is clear to the naked eye: the dusting of yellow-green powder on outdoor patio furniture and cars parked on the street and the itchy eyes, runny noses, and sleepless nights starting weeks earlier than in the past.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

1. Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being
2. Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
3. Goal 13: Climate Action

Air Pollution, Plant Stress, and ‘Polluted Pollen’

Most people recognize that air pollution — a mix of hazardous gases and particulate matter — harms human health and the environment. Air pollutants can cause or aggravate lung diseases and heart disease and even affect cognitive function.

Less well-known is pollution’s invisible toll on plant life.

“Plants that are grown in pollution-stressed situations are known to release more allergens,” says Elaine Fuertes, a research fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

Depending on the plant species, air pollutants can change the chemical composition of pollen, increasing the potency of pollen allergens and triggering stronger allergic reactions in people.

When researchers in Spain compared grass pollen from polluted urban zones to less polluted rural zones, people exposed to “polluted pollen” showed more skin reactivity, indicating a stronger allergic reaction, during allergy testing. These results echo findings from another study where pollen from pine trees with the highest exposure to the air pollutant ozone showed higher levels of allergenicity in participants.

Air pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides may also make the exine — the outer coating of pollen grains — from some plant species more fragile and, therefore, more likely to rupture into smaller fragments that can penetrate deeper into the lungs.

This revelation may help explain why people often experience troublesome allergy symptoms even on days with low pollen counts.

Fuertes says pollen counts are still important, but we are likely measuring the wrong marker if we want to improve forecasting and provide patients with the most useful piece of information about day-to-day allergy risk.

“Our group is trying to push the measurement of allergen levels because this relationship between pollen counts and allergen levels is influenced by climate but also pollution,” she says.

She points to recent work showing that a new test for grass allergen levels connected more consistently with people’s experience of allergy symptoms than grass pollen counts. But researchers’ ability to measure allergen levels for the vast array of plant species is still in the experimental stages.

Double Whammy: Air Pollution Weakens Human Defenses to Pollen

It gets worse: Air pollution causes harm beyond changing the potency of plant pollen.

When people breathe in pollutants like ozone, particulate matter, and diesel exhaust particles, these toxic exposures damage the lining of our airways and interfere with our body’s defenses in ways that can amplify our reactions to pollen.

“The air pollution is making the pollen more potent. And the exposure of each of them at the same time is priming the lungs to have almost a more exaggerated response,” says Nassikas, the pulmonologist.

Usually, a thin layer of protective mucus and small hairlike projections on the surface of the cells that line our nasal passages and lungs help capture and clear inhaled particles like pollen. However, exposure to air pollution can weaken this defense system, allowing allergens to stick around longer and penetrate deeper into our tissues, making it easier for pollen to trigger an allergic response.

And air pollution can prime us to develop pollen allergies in even more insidious ways.

Our immune systems develop over time, responding to everything in the environment — from the food we eat to the air we breathe. Exposure to a range of germs and chemicals in the environment helps the immune system learn what is dangerous and needs to be removed from the body and what is harmless and can be ignored. When our immune system is exposed to air pollutants like particulate matter, it can become dysregulated — and start to attack harmless substances like pollen.

Researchers have found that diesel exhaust particles, commonly found in traffic pollution, can increase immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels, a key player in allergic reactions. In another study focused on people sensitive to ragweed pollen, individuals exposed to both diesel exhaust particles and ragweed pollen allergens had an allergen-specific IgE response 16 times higher than when exposed to the pollen allergen alone.

More research is needed to fully understand the impacts of the combination of air pollution and pollen, but there is strong experimental evidence that exposure to both can worsen health.

The Problem is Set to Get Worse as the Climate Changes

As global temperatures rise, longer and more intense pollen seasons are expected, alongside worsening air quality from air pollutants like ground-level ozone. This means that seasonal allergies and other allergic lung diseases like asthma will likely continue to increase — and current research about the health and quality of life impacts of allergies is just catching up.

“We’re really at the tip of this iceberg looking at only the severe cases … We are missing a huge chunk of the burden,” Fuertes says.

How to Protect Yourself from Pollen and Air Pollution

As a pulmonologist, Nassikas often recommends various interventions to protect his patients from air pollution and pollen. His advice:

• Monitor air quality and pollen counts: Stay informed about air quality indexes and pollen forecasts. This knowledge can help you plan outdoor activities to avoid peak pollution and pollen exposure times.
• Improve indoor air quality: Consider air purifiers with HEPA filters to remove pollen, pollutants, and other allergens from indoor air
  

  SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

  1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

  • SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 13: Climate Action

  2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

  • SDG 3.9: By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination.
  • SDG 11.6: By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management.
  • SDG 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.

  3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

  Yes, there are indicators mentioned in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets. These include:

  • Air quality indexes and pollen forecasts to monitor air quality and pollen counts.
  • Use of air purifiers with HEPA filters to remove pollen, pollutants, and other allergens from indoor air.
  • Reduction in the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air pollution.
  • Reduction in the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including air quality improvement.
  • Strengthening of resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.

  SDGs, Targets, and Indicators Table

  SDGs	Targets	Indicators
  SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being	SDG 3.9: By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination.	– Reduction in the number of deaths and illnesses from air pollution. – Improvement in air quality indexes.
  SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	SDG 11.6: By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management.	– Reduction in the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including improvement in air quality. – Implementation of waste management strategies.
  SDG 13: Climate Action	SDG 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.	– Strengthening of resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters. – Reduction in the intensity and frequency of climate-related hazards.

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  Fuente: yaleclimateconnections.org

   

  

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