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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

#161

Post by sajithdilshan »

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…

In Berlin the situation is horrible. For the past few weeks the pollen mixed with rain water looks like a yellow chemical spill on the side of the roads. Also it gets worse depending on the wind as well because most of the pollen from nearby forests in Brandenburg ends up in Berlin as well.

I grew up in a tropical country and never ever had any allergies in my life but in Berlin if I step outside with taking anti-allergy pills, that would be the death of me

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

#163

Post by thaumasiotes »

martin_a wrote: post #32
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the relevance of "major cities grew rapidly". That can only mean that demand for wood spiked. There's no way it can cause local wood to become less competitive with imported wood.

> There's no way it can cause local wood to become less competitive with imported wood. But isn't that what we're seeing around the world? Be it cheaper labor, political control or whatever else, imported goods can be cheaper than locally produced goods.

Sure, imported goods can be cheaper than locally produced goods. But the locally produced goods don't suffer from the fact that their market is expanding!

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

#164

Post by IAmBroom »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #134
MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL. Trees have (biological) sex. This just blew my head. I must have been too sleepy when we saw that in high school.

It's more complicated in plants than in at least mammals. Some do, some don't, and some do and don't.

One species of fungus (split-gill mushroom, Schizophyllum commune) has over 20,000 distinct sexes. Its spores can fertilize any of the other sexes - guaranteeing, basically, that it CAN mate with any spore NOT from its own parent.

Some plants do this by activating the male and female parts of their flowers at different times, but this strategy is way stronger.

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

#165

Post by IAmBroom »

xchip wrote: post #38

This article could have been summarized in three paragraphs. I'm really hating this trend of diluting content by giving useless testimonials, random anecdotes and delaying the resolution of the subject as much as possible.

You're REALLY going to hate this one weird trick Jesus did with all of the Old Testament, then. (and preemptively, with the New Testament, too!)

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

#166

Post by thrownthatway »

eesmith wrote: post #62
thrownthatway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"A biome (/ˈbaɪ.oʊm/ BY-ohm) is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, animal life, and an ecosystem. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome

It’s the ”completely separate” claim I take issue with.

How can it be completely separate?

And anyway, as soon as you move one organism to another area, it brings with it all its commensal and parasitic organisms.

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

#167

Post by timschmidt »

IAmBroom wrote: post #112
Tade0 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expla…

What if the human body's response to external influences (including parasites) is nuanced and complex? What if the very idea of "parasite" is overly redactive: maybe there are both advantages and disadvantages of having another organism in your internal biome, in varying amounts?

Very Holobiont of you.

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

#168

Post by eesmith »

thrownthatway wrote: post #166
eesmith wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A biome (/ˈbaɪ.oʊm/ BY-ohm) is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, animal life, and an ecosystem. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome

It’s the ”completely separate” claim I take issue with. How can it be completely separate? And anyway, as soon as you move one organism to another area, it brings with it all its commensal and parasitic organisms.

Because "completely" isn't read to include everything down to tardigrades and E.coli.

To start, here are examples of (seemingly knowledgeable) people using that phrase:

"The Atlantic lowland forest of Brazil comprises a completely separate biome from the Amazonian forests to the north and west, and is home to a rich array of endemic fauna and flora. Among over 200 endemic birds are at least ten endemic genera, including such spectacular species as the Seven-coloured Tanager (Tangara fastuosa)" - https://archive.org/details/atlasofbirdsdive0000unwi/mode/2u...

"Now called the pine-hemlock hardwood forest, or northern hardwoods, it had survived the axe, fire, and insects, and lay as an ecotone between deciduous forest to the south and coniferous forest to the north. Shelford considered it to be a third association of the transcontinental coniferous forest biome, while Clements viewed it as a completely separate biome." - https://archive.org/details/pioneerecologist00crok/mode/2up?...

We can see the first page of that latter paper at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1930076 .

It start "Plant ecologists have regarded an essentially complete difference in climax dominants as the basis for the recognition of the major plant communities called plant formations." then mentions how that "usually includes some wide-ranging species among the dominants" ending "It is the purpose of this paper to show that it is not always feasible to make sole use of the criteria of plant dominants and maintain the integrity of some of the impor-". (For a summary of the paper, go back to https://archive.org/details/pioneerecologist00crok/mode/2up?... .)

So "completely separate" should be read to mean something more like "essentially complete difference", and not "absolute difference".

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

#169

Post by dv_dt »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #89
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 wonder why we focus so much on this claim, when there are many studies giving other plausible explanations. > Living less than 75 m from the main road was significantly associated with lifetime allergic rhinitis (AR), past-year AR symptoms, diagnosed AR, and treated AR. The distance to the main road (P for trend=0.001), the length of the main road (P for trend=0.041), and the proportion of the main road area (P for…

Seems like just the thing for a careful public health study to figure out a scientifically backed policy. Pollution might be a singular driving factor, or significant combined factor driving allergies. The link from pollution to asthma and lung cancer is already pretty clear and driving vehicle pollution down in neighborhoods is already a public health win independent of allergy rates anyway I think.

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

#170

Post by agos »

amake wrote: post #122
saltybytes wrote: post #107

I was surprised to not find anything about possible cures or treatments in the article. I had bad allergies myself in my teenage years - unable to sleep for weeks - I finally sought help. The western medicine offers protein shots (similar treatment as to food allergies) but I heard good things about acupuncture. First, I was very skeptical about how needles could "help" with allergies. But about 2 months into the tre…

I live in Japan and developed an allergy to cedar pollen after I came. I started sublingual immunotherapy (a pill of concentrated pollen you dissolve under your tongue) three years ago and now can make it through the pollen season symptom-free. Supposedly you even keep the immunity after stopping the medication, though I have not tested that yet.

I did sublingual immunotherapy for gramineae and while the immunity does wane with years and in particularly bad years (like this one) you'll get symptoms it's still waaaaay better than before
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