#HEALTH: Climate change worsens allergies
The United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has found that a shifting climate has begun altering the production and distribution of pollen and spores.
As winter frost thaws earlier and spring gets warmer, plants and trees flower earlier, extending the pollen season, numerous studies have shown.
Air pollution can increase people's sensitivity to allergens, while invasive species are spreading into new regions and causing fresh waves of allergies.
More people, particularly in industrialised nations, have reported developing allergy symptoms in recent decades.
Around a quarter of adults in Europe suffer from airborne allergies, including severe asthma, while the proportion among children is 30 to 40 per cent.
That figure is expected to rise to half of Europeans by 2050, according to the World Health Organisation.
"We're in crisis because allergies are exploding," says Severine Fernandez, president of the French Allergists' Union.
In the past, allergy sufferers might have dealt only with hay fever, sometimes for years. "Now that person can become asthmatic after just one or two years," Fernandez says.
IRRITANT POLLEN
Climate change affects allergy patients in multiple ways, according to a 2023 report by the WMO.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide, one of the main heat-trapping gases produced by burning fossil fuels, boost plant growth, in turn increasing pollen production.
Air pollution not only irritates the airways of people exposed, but it also stresses plants, which then produce more "allergenic and irritant0 pollen".
Nicolas Visez, an aerobiologist at the University of Lille, says each plant species reacts differently to a variety of factors, such as water availability, temperature and CO2 concentrations.
Birch trees, for example, will wither as summers get hotter and drier, while the heat causes a proliferation of ragweed, a highly allergenic invasive plant.
"There's no doubt that climate change is having an effect," Visez says.
In a study published in 2017, researchers projected that ragweed allergies would more than double in Europe by 2041-2060 as a result of climate change, raising the number of people affected from 33 million to 77 million.
Higher pollen concentrations as well as longer pollen seasons could make symptoms more severe.
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