It’s ironic that on my way to my college reunion in Maine — to Colby College, where I actually learned about plants — I had a moment of panic, thinking I’d left the fluticasone propionate on the bathroom counter.
Plants are, of course, the reason I need that medicine in the first place. They spew pollen into the air starting as early as late February and continue until the first frost.
Since I’m in an academic mindset, let’s look at the pollen season from a psychological standpoint before delving into the pollen itself. Declinism and rosy retrospection are terms for cognitive biases which lead us to believe the past wasn’t as bad as it really was. Sometimes you might even hear the term “allergy amnesia.” Because of the availability heuristic — our tendency to judge how common something is by how easily it comes to mind — our brains are acutely aware of this week’s runny nose and itchy eyes, whereas the symptoms from five years ago are forgotten.
Which brings us back to the plants themselves and whether this season is really as bad as it feels.
We are actually at the tail end of tree pollen season and the beginning of grass pollen season, so there’s an overlap right now. This is one of the reasons why the second half of May into June can often bring about some of the worst of your allergies.
There was actually pollen in the air back in early March from maples, elms, ash and alder. Since then, pollen has come from oak, birch, cottonwood, walnut mulberry and of course pine — the pollen of which we are all seeing all over the place. However, yellow pine pollen grains are very large so they are not typically an allergen for most of us.
The amount of trees and grass that is the source of pollen hasn’t markedly changed from year to year, although I will say at the peak of the agricultural age here in New England, cleared farmland meant less trees and lower pollen counts. With reforestation over the past century, farmland has decreased, the trees have come back — and so has the pollen.
One thing that does contribute to seasonality and even daily variations in pollen is the lack of rain. With roughly 18% of Massachusetts in severe drought, and virtually the entire state drier than average, there’s nothing to regularly cleanse the air. The lack of rain prevents the pollen from being pulled out of the atmosphere by the raindrops. If we were in a rainy, wet June, there would still be pollen released from the trees and the grass, but it would most certainly end up getting washed from the atmosphere on a more regular basis.
The good news is that the tree pollen season is quickly coming to an end, so if that’s the primary allergen you suffer from, things should be getting better.
The bad news is that if you are a grass or a ragweed pollen sufferer, it might be time to stock up on that Zyrtec or Flonase. And certainly don’t forget it on the bathroom counter.
