Itchy eyes, runny nose? Climate change may be to blame

A team of researchers at Rutgers University's Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences used computer modeling to study the effects of climate change on the distribution of pollen from native U.
S.
oak and ragweed, two common allergens
.

The study, published in Frontiers in Allergy, found that climate change is expected to significantly increase pollen levels in the air by 2050, with some of the greatest increases typically less common
in areas.
The team was led
by Panos George Polos, professor of environmental and occupational health and justice at the Rutgers School of Public Health.

"Pollen is a great sentinel for the effects of climate change because changes in variables like carbon dioxide and temperature affect how plants behave," said George Polos, who is also director of the Laboratory of Computational Chemical Dynamics at Rutgers University and a faculty member
at Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine.
"At the same time, pollen production and pollen's impact on allergic diseases have been increasing due to climate change, one of the few studies that predict this trend in the
future.
"

Previous efforts to link pollen indices to climate change have been limited
by the scarcity of data.
For example, there are about 80 pollen sampling stations in the United States, operated by various private and public institutions using different sampling methods
.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers employed the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System, an open-source tool managed by the U.
S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to model the distribution
of pollen from sensitized oak and ragweed under historical (2004) and future (2047) conditions.

The results suggest that even under mild warming conditions, pollen seasons across the United States start earlier and last longer, with average pollen concentrations increasing
across much of the country.
In the northeast and southwest, the average concentration of oak pollen may rise by more than 40 percent, and the average concentration of ragweed may rise by more than
20 percent.

Regional pollen transfer
is also observed.
In parts of Nevada and North Texas, oak pollen levels could double by mid-century, while ragweed pollen in Massachusetts and Virginia could increase by 80 percent
by 2050.

The pollen study is part of an ongoing project at the Rutgers Ozone Research Center, funded by the EPA and the State of New Jersey, to study how climate change will affect air quality
in the state.
Much of the work is investigating the state's fight with ground-level ozone, a byproduct of fossil fuel burning that damages lungs
.

"New Jersey's air quality will be adversely affected by climate change, whether it's anthropogenic pollution or increased pollen levels," George Polos said
.
"For people with asthma, exposure to irritants such as pollen and ozone increases the chances of
respiratory disease.
To protect the most vulnerable, we need to understand how these stimuli behave
in a warming world.
”

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