After a hard winter, most of us are ready for the warmer days, the songs of birds that spend their winters down south and the blossoming flowers of spring. Less pleasant for many of us is the start of allergy season.
GBH meteorologist Dave Epstein joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to shed some light on what to expect in the coming months and tips for managing spring allergies. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Let’s jump right in. Acknowledging that, for some people, allergy season is all year, but when we talk about spring allergies, when does that typically start in New England? Are there other factors that might cause it to start earlier or later than usual?
Dave Epstein: It’s a great question. So, typically, allergy season begins actually as early as late February. Now, we’re talking tree pollen — which is going to be the first thing that gets into the air.
As you mentioned, some folks have allergies all year round. They might be allergic to dust mites, fall things, they might be allergic to their cat or their dog. But we’re talking plants and what starts to emit the pollen coming out of the flowers of the plants.
Rath: When exactly is the peak pollen period for this region?
Epstein: It varies. We get into the spring, and we have the tree pollen. Right now, we’ve got things like the maples, birches and ashes beginning to emit some of their pollen. Eventually, we’ll get things like the oaks. And then, we’ll also see that pine pollen — which is the yellow, greenish pollen that covers everything — that happens later in May and into June.
It depends on the variety of pollen as to when the peak is. So, maple pollen will peak over the next few weeks, and then that will start to decline. Then, we’ll go up to the oak pollen, and that will decline. We’ll get into the pine pollen and … you get the idea.
Rath: With that, I guess different people have different levels of sensitivity, so can you really say which pollen is worse than others?
Epstein: Yeah, that’s right. Everybody’s going to be a little different. For some people, it might be pollen or the birch pollen that’s bothering them. For others, it might be the oak pollen.
We do know that even though you can see — and this is just interesting, it’s kind of something that people don’t understand — even though you see the pollen grains of the pine pollen, and it makes a mess, it’s actually not an allergen for nearly everybody. The pollen grains are too big.
So, what happens is that your body reacts to those small little grains of pollen releasing histamines. It sees it as an invader, and that’s why you have allergies. Some people just don’t get that reaction. Others do. But the pine pollen is not really an allergen, in spite of the fact that it’s a messy thing.
Rath: We know that climate change affects the seasons across the board. Can you talk about how it’s affecting pollen production and allergy season?
Epstein: Absolutely. As we see warmer weather occurring earlier, the pollen grains get released out of the trees a little bit early, so we see the pollen season starting as early as February. If you were further south in the mid-Atlantic, it might be in early or mid-February. [If] you go even further south, in parts of January, they could start seeing pollen.
Typically, if you went back, say, 100 years, we probably did not see much in the way of pollen being released in late February. Now, that is not the case because we’re coming out of winter and going into spring a little bit earlier.
On the other end, we have the ragweeds in the fall; we have a lot of the fall pollens and the grasses. Now, that will last longer because we’re not seeing frost as early, so we’re seeing the growing season extended into the fall. So, the pollen season is being extended on both ends as the climate continues to warm.
Rath: For those who suffer, do you have any god tips on alleviating some of the symptoms?
Epstein: I find it ironic that as someone who loves plants, I’m allergic to a lot of different pollen, so I pretty much get myself on those antihistamines pretty early. I try to use the ones that are non-drowsy and, you know, mitigate the fact that I want to be outside.
If I’m going to be outside, I’m just going to bring a bunch of Kleenex and, you know, suffer through. But I love spring so much, and I love everything that’s happening around the area now.
Rath: Finally, Dave, I was dying to ask you about this. I came across a study that suggested there are some indoor houseplants that can help reduce allergy symptoms by actually improving air quality. I mean, I know that plants produce oxygen, so that’s good. But I did come across this on the internet, so I wanted to ask you if there’s any truth to that.
Epstein: Sure. So, we’re talking [about] probably different things in the air in your house, so we’re not necessarily worried about pollen because the plants aren’t really taking and cleaning the air of the pollen. But they do clean it of some of the chemicals that are in the air and put out fresher oxygen.
I have — and I’m not exaggerating — about 100 indoor house plants. Many will go outside over the next couple of weeks. I’ve always said that people coming into my house have really clean air. Some plants clean it a little better than others, but any house plant is going to do a little bit of that.
