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Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
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Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#22[flagged]
I’ll bite: which ideology are you claiming believers in climate change are motivated by?
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#23Hmm, 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…
Spruce is also a problem in Poland, especially southern. Leaf trees have been replaced with "fast growing" spruce over a hundred years ago.
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#24Hmm, 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 diversity.
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might have something to do with it: > When the sugi and hinoki forests were first planted in the 1950s and 60s, they weren't meant to stand forever. At the time, it was assumed they would be gradually cut down and replanted over time, as had been the case before the war. But as Japan's economy boomed in the late 60s and 70s, major cities like Kobe and Tokyo grew rapidly, and it ended up being cheaper to import w…
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.
It does: Cheap rural workers could get better paying jobs in the cities so wages increased in rural areas to
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#26Interesting. 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
I would assume it has more to do with less exposition to hay/pollen in urban areas, for instance in years in Beijing I've had hardly allergies since it is not exactly green, though I went to parks, but here in Prague right now with everything blooming it's nuts.
Actually now that I think about it never head really problems with allergies even in Southeast Asia, though I was in very green areas, maybe humidity helps as well?
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might have something to do with it: > When the sugi and hinoki forests were first planted in the 1950s and 60s, they weren't meant to stand forever. At the time, it was assumed they would be gradually cut down and replanted over time, as had been the case before the war. But as Japan's economy boomed in the late 60s and 70s, major cities like Kobe and Tokyo grew rapidly, and it ended up being cheaper to import w…
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.
It required imported wood come what may, which opened up regulations and economies of scale that would have made importing wood expensive.
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#28Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#29Hmm, 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
Re: Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
#30Japan being 68% forest is an astounding stat.
Still behind Finland (73.7%) and Sweden (68.7%) though and Laos (71.6%) as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_ar...