Warmth after rain spells bad news for hay fever sufferers
The pollen season is well and truly under way. While the recent cooler weather has reduced the birch pollen making noses stream across the north of the country, our great British oaks are now in bloom and the pollen is beginning to intensify.
I am fortunate enough to be immune to such things, and as my wife reaches for the anti-histamine I think of a favourite quote from William Blake: “Not everybody sees alike: a tree that moves some to tears of joy to other eyes is just a green thing in the way.”
Or should that be for the 40 per cent of the population who reportedly suffer from hay fever – a green thing making them sneeze?
Anyway, forget the trees; it’s nearing mid-may and the blossom is beginning to drift away. In reality it is the flowering grasses that hay fever sufferers need be most worried about.
Dock, mugwort, nettle, oil seed rape and plantain (a common garden weed) are the worst offenders.
Spending more time drinking outside – as this great nation is often inclined to do at this time of year – further exacerbates the problem. Beer, wine and most spirits contain histamine, the chemical that sets off allergy symptoms in the body.
The rain forecast for some this weekend (particularly in the southwest), followed by a return by Tuesday to drier, warmer weather, creates the prefect conditions for exacerbating grass pollen.
In the most extreme cases, this sudden rain and downturn in temperatures following a prolonged warm spell can bring on something called “thunderstorm asthma”. When this combination of a dramatic weather event and rising pollen levels occurred in Australia in November 2016, it led to 8,500 people being sent to hospital and nine deaths.
Fortunately, nothing so severe is likely to take grip this weekend. Although that is always easy for the non-sufferers to say, isn’t it?
The haves and the have-nots of hay fever can sometimes seem as if they are occupying different atmospheres while sharing the same land.