
Have you started feeling like your allergies are acting up earlier every year, or maybe they’re lasting longer? New research suggests it’s not just your imagination — climate change appears to be disrupting nature’s usual calendar. Areas with an earlier spring had a 14% higher rate of seasonal allergies (hay fever), the researchers found. “Climate change is real. It’s impacting our ecosystem now, and that, in turn, is impacting our health,” said study author Amir Sapkota. He’s an associate professor at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in College Park, Md. For the study, the investigators used high-resolution satellite data provided by NASA to identify the start of spring throughout the United States. They linked this information to data from a nationally representative sample of Americans collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sapkota said the researchers looked at what happened if spring began earlier or later than normal. “When spring starts early, the burden of allergic disease — or hay fever — goes up. But we also saw high hay fever prevalence when spring was late, too. It’s like mortality with extreme temperatures. Temperatures that are very hot or very cold can kill us. There’s a sweet spot that’s OK,” Sapkota explained. If the season starts early, trees bloom and release pollen earlier than usual and may release pollen for… read on >