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Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

bbc.com

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Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#71

Post by Tade0 »

Terr_ wrote: post #43
dv_dt wrote: post #24

Hmm, I'm also wondering about studies about overly sanitized environments for children being correlated with higher allergy rates. I guess poking around for a good representative study, it's actually low diversity of microbial exposure, not "cleaning" per-se that is correlated - e.g this is one reason why households with dogs have lower allergy rates. A monoculture of certain tree species also implies less microbial…

I'd like to preemptively draw a line between two different kinds of hypothesis when it comes to hygiene: 1. The immune system is not being exposed enough to wild or even infectious content, and it needs more threats to fight off. 2. ("Old Friends") The immune system is not being exposed enough to commensal or even symbiotic organisms that we co-evolved with, throwing off its calibration and tuning. I instinctively pr…

Regarding the second point: ...or parasitic.

There's a hypothesis that says the incidence of allergies correlates inversely with the incidence of certain common parasites, like the tapeworm or the pinworm. Additionally, nowadays pregnant women are advised to avoid getting infected with toxoplasmosis due to the birth defects it causes, but it wasn't until the 70s when the last route of transmission was found and explained.

What if the body is just looking for parasites where there are none?

EDIT: I also lean on the second, as the first doesn't explain why allergies can come and go seemingly without reason.

Personally currently I'm allergic to some unindentified plant and it's a different one than back when I was a child. Meanwhile my child is right now experiencing "my" childhood allergy season - with similar severity at that.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#74

Post by pelasaco »

idiomaddict wrote: post #29
flohofwoe wrote: post #14

Hmm, most German forests are also vast monoculture 'tree farms' and have been for the last 250 years (also caused by large scale deforestation in the centuries before). In the Ore Mountains we also have those yellow clouds of pollen coming off spruce trees every few years, covering everything with a thin yellow dust layer, yet I'm not aware that the number of people with pollen allergies is exceptionally high (oth, m…

I moved to Germany as an adult from a completely separate biome, and I’ve got terrible problems with allergies I never had in my home country

Yes. I relate myself with that. If i am in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, no issues.. in Germany, i have terrible problems with allergies too.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#75

Post by expedition32 »

jdshaffer wrote: post #65
hastily3114 wrote: post #3

Interesting. I noticed that many people have hay fever in Japan, but I always just assumed it was genetic or something. I wonder if living there for a long time will make you more sensitive to pollen

Yes. I developed hay fever after living here in Japan for a couple years. Was fine the first few years, though it was amusing to watch "yellow clouds of pollen" being blown from the trees with random gusts of wind. Now it's not so amusing. My car windows are dusted with a new layer of "light yellow" every couple days now (in season).

Airconditioning 24/7 everywhere makes people weak is my theory.

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#78

Post by dwa3592 »

vikramkr wrote: post #58
niemandhier wrote: post #54

“Arboreal sexism” is a similar phenomenon: We prefer male trees in cities since they do not produce fruit that drop on the streets. The result is a much higher pollen load.

That's not actually a thing. Very few trees we plant have specific male vs female plants. One of the few that does that gets brought up in this context, ginko, tends to have male trees preferred because the fruit kind of reeks. Ginkgo fruit is also toxic so you really don't want masses of it getting washed into local waterways in ecosystems the tree isn't native to - not a great time for the local wildlife. A signifi…

thanks for this clarification. until today i was under the impression that they planted male trees only because they looked prettier and weren't as messy as the female ones (to reduce the cleaning bill of the local municipal)

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#79

Post by ielillo »

expedition32 wrote: post #75
jdshaffer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I developed hay fever after living here in Japan for a couple years. Was fine the first few years, though it was amusing to watch "yellow clouds of pollen" being blown from the trees with random gusts of wind. Now it's not so amusing. My car windows are dusted with a new layer of "light yellow" every couple days now (in season).

Airconditioning 24/7 everywhere makes people weak is my theory.

AC are the bane for allergic people. It dries the air and flares the nostrils

Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

#80

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

The article makes the argument "there is a lot of pollen" and separately "there exist monoculture forests / tree farms" in Japan.

But what it doesn't do is:

1. Argue that the pollen is worse because of monoculture relative to polyculture forests (we could mix sugi and hinoki and...I assume net pollen would be the same?)

2. Argue that lots of pollen leads to more allergies. I mean, you might think that higher levels of exposure in childhood would lead to *fewer* people with allergies. So maybe a lack of forests in the past --> lots of people with allergies today? Why are the Japanese so allergic?

This article is bad and the author should feel bad.

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