The pollen count in Atlanta Georgia was 9,000 yesterday.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

If you are a tree with female reproductive parts its a very good thing.  That is because pollen is actually the male reproductive part of plants. These boy pollens depend on either the wind or insects (such as bees and wasps) to take them to the females to make their love connection.

If you are a human with seasonal allergies, a pollen count that high is a bad thing….a very bad thing.  Anything over 1,000 is considered extremely high and 9,000 is to the moon!  Counting pollen is a science..  The method currently used takes only 20 minutes and was devised by Walter Jinotti, a biomedical engineer who lived in the northeastern United States and suffered from hay fever.  Before Jenotti developed his method, pollen counts required 24 hours to devise and the data was already old by the time the collection was complete.  We take pollen counts for granted today, but it wasn’t always the case.  He was honored by the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1997 as Inventor of the Year and held many patents, including one for a blood pump.

Weather trends and pollen counts go hand in hand.  Pollen counts tend to be higher following drought years because plants want to increase their chances of survival. The mild winter that most of the United States experienced caused the pollen to be produced much earlier this year.  Staying with the Atlanta example, they are peaking about 2 weeks earlier than normal.

If pollen counts are high one day and then low the next does that mean your allergy symptoms will go away immediately?  That is not the case.  Even if pollen counts dip temporarily do to rain, your symptoms may hang on for a day or more.

Conventional wisdom has always held that pollen counts are highest in the morning and lowest in the evening.  However, studies of some specific trees has shown that they are releasing their pollens at night.  This means if you have been sleeping with the windows open thinking you were protected from pollen you aren’t.  Those open windows aren’t a good idea in the first place, so if you are going to keep them open, get them fitted with special screens that will repel those pollens.  The MicroAirScreen by Group Weston will do the job.  

No matter if the windows are open or closed, keep your air cleaner running on high.  Each time the doors and windows are opened and each time a family member (human or pet) goes out and comes back in they will bring pollen attached to their hair, clothing (or fur) and shoes.  Speaking of shoes, its a good idea to leave them by the door so you don’t track pollen all over the house.  You also want to change your clothing in the bathroom, where hard surfaces prevail, so that it is easier to clean up those stray pollens (or lost boys).

You can get reliable pollen forecasts from several internet sites such as http://pollen.com  and http://weather.com.  You will also generally find pollen forecasts for your area in your local paper.  Which brings us back to the late Mr. Jinotti.  In 1982 his method of counting pollen was recognized by the Associated Press as the most reliable and accurate method for inclusion in newspapers.

Til Next Time!

Cheryl
The Allergy Store