Allergies, asthma increase in the Lower Mainland, climate change to blame: experts

If you’re one of those people who’ve been sneezing, coughing, and generally feeling sluggish lately, welcome to allergy season in B.C.

There is a lot of cottonwood flying around and it’s wreaking havoc on many people. Things are getting so bad, experts believe it’s leading to an increase in the number of people who have allergies or asthma, or both.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) says plants are releasing way more pollen now than they did in previous years, and the climate crisis is to blame.

CAPE President Dr. Melissa Lem, who’s based in Vancouver, says there is a range of factors driving your worsening allergies.

“Just all those different moving parts that are coming together to create this storm of allergies. It’s not just pollen, it’s also air pollution, it’s also flooding that causes mould,” she explained.

Related Articles:

• B.C. in the hot seat as more extreme weather to come: research

• Metro Vancouverites grapple with spring allergy season

She says she’s seeing more patients right now because of these issues. “I’ve seen many more patients in the last few years, just anecdotally, saying, ‘I never had allergies before and now I do.'”

Allergies in both children and adults have definitely been on the rise over the last several years, says Dr. Susan Waserman, division director of clinical immunology and allergy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

“We’ve been seeing this now for decades,” Waserman said. “It’s eczema. It’s allergic rhinitis. It’s asthma. It’s food allergy. It’s really everything.”

“We used to think that pollen allergy wouldn’t make an appearance ’till the age of five or so. I see a lot of environmental allergies a couple of years earlier than that now. It’s a higher number of people and [they’re] starting earlier,” added Waserman.

Research has shown that over the last few decades in North America, “the average pollen season has extended about three weeks and that now plants release about 20 per cent more pollen than they used to,” Lem explained to CityNews.

That falls in line with data gathered by Aerobiology, a Canadian company that monitors airborne allergens such as pollen and mould spores.

“We are seeing a lot more pollen and higher concentrations of pollen overall in the air year over year,” said Aerobiology spokesperson Daniel Coates. “Pollen reacts to warmer weather. The more warmer weather you have, the more pollen you’re generally going to have in the air. And so there seems to be a correlation between the amount of pollen that we see in the air and the warmer weather that we’re having due to climate change.”

Cecilia Sierra-Heredia, a research associate studying environmental health and children’s allergies and asthma at Simon Fraser University (SFU), agrees.

“The hypothesis is that this is a double exposure that kids are growing up with,” Sierra-Heredia noted. “More pollen in the air, more particulate matter, more pollution that’s inflaming the airways and then kind of priming their respiratory tissues and their immune systems to develop allergies and asthma.”

Toddler struggles with respiratory illness

For the last two years, it has become the norm for Daniela Mora-Fisher and her husband to rush their toddler to the hospital.

“A cold would become a wheeze. A wheeze would become a crisis,” said Mora-Fisher.

Julian, now three years old, has been “struggling with respiratory distress since probably he was 18 months,” she explained.

Julian Mora-Fisher, 3, smiles in this undated handout photo. For the last two years, rushing their toddler to hospital has become the norm for Daniela Mora-Fisher and her husband. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Daniela Mora-Fisher)

Mora-Fisher, a foreign-trained physician who now works as a researcher at a Toronto doctor’s office, suspects a combination of allergies and viruses might be triggering what could be asthma. Specialists at her local hospital have seen Julian in their asthma clinic, she said, but they’ve told her they need to wait until he’s old enough to do the breathing tests required to confirm it.

Mora-Fisher and her husband have tried everything they can to reduce potential allergens — including moving out of an old house to try to get away from mould and from busy bus traffic she thought might have been polluting the air.

Possible solutions

In addition to taking steps to reduce climate change overall, there are more immediate measures that people suffering from allergies and their healthcare providers can take to provide some relief.

Air purifiers in the home can help allergy sufferers, says Sierra-Heredia. If pollen is the problem, people should consider changing their clothes when they come inside and even showering if they’ve spent a lot of time outside in a park.

Allergy medications have improved over the years, adds Waserman — including allergy tablets that “are now able to desensitize you to trees, to grass, to ragweed.”

Many people dismiss allergies and “suffer in silence” when they don’t have to, she says.

“When you can’t sleep, when you can’t concentrate, when your kid’s exam performance is impacted … all of these things are important quality-of-life measures. So don’t ignore them.”

The environment ahead

Our surroundings clearly have an effect on our health and there’s a possibility Western Canada could be headed for an El Niño pattern.

“El Niño is the warming of the waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific, off the west coast of South America. That affects the weather patterns all the way up into Canada and the West Coast of Canada more specifically. How that affects us in B.C. is a lower snowpack and potentially not a great snow year for the skiers and riders,” explained CityNews Meteorologist Michael Kuss.

That is potentially really bad news for the local mountains which rely heavily on those winter tourism dollars.

“If you’re a skier or snowboarder or work in the industry in Western Canada, you never want to hear, ‘Strong El Niño potentially developing.’ [El Niño] is normally a wintertime and springtime effect for Canada.”

Kuss adds we’re coming out of a La Niña season — a big reason why the Lower Mainland was slammed with multiple, powerful snowstorms this past winter that brought the region to a halt.