Itchy, watery eyes. Runny nose. Scratchy throat. Yellow car.
Oh, the joys of pollen
season in the South.
“Whenever something’s blooming, you’ve got pollen,”
said
University
of Georgia horticulturist. Right now, he said, oak, pine
and birch are the main
culprits.
“Pollen’s not all bad,” McLaurin said. “If we didn’t have
pollen, we
wouldn’t have any flowers.”
Not only is pollen a flower maker and allergy stimulator.
It’s also a biological
marker.
“Archeologists can tell if a desert was once a forest by
the presence of
pollen,” McLaurin said. So don’t look for pollen to suddenly
disappear. And frankly,
it’s the pollen you don’t see that’s the problem.
“People think goldenrod in the fall gives them allergy
problems, because they see
it blooming,” he said. “But it’s really the ragweed blooms
they don’t see that
cause the problem.”
The same can be said for pine pollen, the thick, yellow
pollen seen now. Large, visible
pine pollen rarely causes allergy problems, but oak usually
does.
“We have an explosion of pollen in the spring,” said Pam
Griggs of the
Atlanta Allergy Clinic, one of two certified pollen counters
in Georgia. “Then
everything will settle back down.”
To measure the pollen in the air, the clinic uses a
special sampler that raises a
silicone-greased rod into the air. After 24 hours, the rod
is removed and examined under a
microscope to get the pollen count.
In the spring, Griggs said, pollen counts of zero to 30
are considered low. Counts of
30-60 are moderate, 60-120 high and anything over 120
extremely high.
The count on March 31 was more than 1,500.
That kind of pollen doesn’t just invade your eyes and
nose. It invades your house, too.
“This is certainly no time to air out your house,” said
University of Georgia
specialist. “Keep your
house closed, and turn on the air conditioner for
ventilation.”
But just keeping the doors and windows closed may not be
enough.
“There’s really no effective way to keep pollen out of a
house,” Dorman said.
“You just have to take steps to reduce it.”
Humidity affects the amount of pollen finding its way
inside.
“When the relative humidity is low, the dry conditions
make pollen float around in
the air,” Dorman said.
“Turning on a humidifier will help make those
particulates fall out of the air and
give you cleaner air inside your home.”
Air filters on heating and cooling systems also can help
filter out pollen.
“It’s just something that we’re going to have to put up
with until the first of
June,” Dorman said.
How long the pollen season lasts depends on blooms.
“Some plants shed more pollen than others, just like some
people sweat more than
others,” McLaurin said.
“Trees cause the most pollen,” he said. “They shed
pollen, and it falls
down and we see it. Petunias shed pollen, too, but we never
see it. Some pollen grains are
bigger than others. Some trees have small grains but produce
a lot of them, and you see
them floating down.”
McLaurin predicts the pollen will lighten up after April,
when the trees get through
shedding.
“If we get a windy day, it blows it around. If we get a
good rain, it will clear
it out more,” he said. “So look forward to spring showers.”
