By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Pollen woes not confined to SE Georgia
Placeholder Image

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Allergy season has come early and hit with a wheezing vengeance in parts of the South and Midwest this year, thanks largely to an unusually warm winter. Abundant pollen is causing watery eyes, sniffles and sneezing.

Doctors say the spring misery stretches from Mississippi to Ohio and from Georgia to Texas, where drought conditions have exacerbated the problem. Forecasters and allergists blame the unseasonably warm weather, and few cold snaps, for causing plants to bloom weeks early and release the allergy-causing particles.

In some areas, allergists say pollen counts this week are as high as they've ever recorded. A clinic at Vanderbilt University in Nashville recorded 11,000 grains of pollen per cubic meter Tuesday, the worst in the 12 years they've tracked the number. The Atlanta Allergy & Asthma Clinic has measured pollen since the 1980s and says this week's counts have beaten a high mark recorded there in April 1999. Their count for Tuesday was almost 9,400. Fifteen-hundred is considered very high.

The medical director of the Vanderbilt Asthma, Sinus and Allergy Program says he's been seeing more patients — even while feeling puny himself.

"I'm kind of sniffly today," Dr. David Hagaman said Tuesday.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America says more than 40 million Americans have nasal allergies, popularly called hay fever. In severe cases, sufferers have difficulty breathing that can send them to the emergency room.

Stephanie Baxter was walloped when she returned to Gallatin, Tenn., from a vacation in Florida last week.

"We hit Tennessee and they started," she said. "I have every possible symptom you can have. I'm trying to keep my energy because I have a 3-month-old and a 3-year-old. There's no time for rest."

For three years, the foundation has ranked Knoxville, Tenn., as the worst city in the country for allergies — based on pollen counts, sales of allergy medications and the presence allergy specialists. The city has been up to 20 degrees warmer than normal the past few weeks. Spring arrived prematurely — along with sales of nose spray.

"It's blooming so early," said Sam Roberts, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn. "Grass mowing has started early this year and stirred things up."

Ranee Randby, community relations director for the Knox County Health Department, said Knoxville's scenic location in the Tennessee valley contributes to the problem.

"We're surrounded by mountains and whatever gets in here stays in here. It's like a bowl," she said. "It's a beautiful, green part of the country but pollen comes with that."

In San Antonio, Texas, patients with allergies have increased in the past few weeks at Southwest General Hospital. Daniel St. Armand, the emergency room director, doesn't have to leave the hospital to find someone suffering.

"I have a friend who goes through this yearly and it affects his whole system," he said. "He constantly has a runny nose and itchy skin and eyes. He's just not himself."

In Atlanta, Andre Osborne returned home from a long weekend to find his black Infiniti sedan caked in yellow pollen.

"I feel terrible," he said. "I know it's not as bad as it can be. But the sneezing, the uncontrollable coughing, it's starting to kick in."

A couple miles away, business was up at Cactus Car Wash as drivers brought in their pollen-covered cars. Yellow water streamed into drains in its parking lot.

"It's very unusual this early on," said manager Jim James. "It's getting cars a lot dirtier, which is happier for us."

 

Sign up for our e-newsletters
From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
8ccd7d661f85d37c8298791c9a56bec6e0f8449d4aea5c09c6ffcf527854f186
Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
Latest Obituaries