Researchers with the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute have simulated how climate change will affect the distribution of two leading allergens – oak and ragweed pollens – across the contiguous United States.
Researchers with the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute have simulated how climate change will affect the distribution of two leading allergens – oak and ragweed pollens – across the contiguous United States. The results, published in the journal Frontiers in Allergy, may make your eyes water.
Using computer models, the team, led by Panos Georgopoulos, a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice at the Rutgers School of Public Health, found that by 2050 climate change significantly will increase airborne pollen loads, with some of the largest surges occurring in areas where pollen is historically uncommon.
“Pollen is an excellent sentinel for the impacts of climate change because shifts in variables like carbon dioxide and temperature affect the way plants behave,” said Georgopoulos, who also is director of the Computational Chemodynamics Laboratory at Rutgers and faculty at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “At the same time, the production of pollen and pollen’s influence on allergic disease has been increasing due to climate change, and this is one of few studies to forecast this trend into the future.”
Read more at: Rutgers University
