Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
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Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
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Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#2You ever see one of those titles where individually you know all the words, but don't know what they mean together?
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#3If by "batonical sexism" we mean the choice to use male trees instead of female trees because it'd be a burden to clean up parts of the female tree that drop to the ground seasonally. It's a straightforward tradeoff: use male trees that produce pollen (and make it worse for allergies) or use female trees that have to get cleaned up (or plant both, and deal with both problems).
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#4tl;dr
Male trees were planted disproportionate to female trees in urban settings because they didn't shed messy seeds. The preponderance of male trees increases the amount of pollen exposure. Author asserts this leads to an epidemic of allergies/asthma. Author asserts this indirectly leads to cancer.
Author fails to apparently take into account that although we are exposed to more male trees than female trees, our total tree (and therefore, pollen) exposure is far lower than historic norms. If adverse consequences are due to pollen over-exposure, we would still be net underexposed to pollen, so any increase in adverse health consequences couldn't be explained by that.
Author also presents themselves as a "horticultural epidemiologist." Worth noting that a google scholar search suggests this person is not an academic and holds no academic credentials, but he does make his income flogging a pair of books on this topic. I guess "Epidemiologist" isn't a protected title, but I usually don't see it applied to someone that doesn't actually work in epidemiology, or hold a degree in epidemiology.
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#5This is such an interesting insight into how urban planning decisions can affect health.
What are the chances that airborne allergens increase rates of food allergies?
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#6tl;dr Male trees were planted disproportionate to female trees in urban settings because they didn't shed messy seeds. The preponderance of male trees increases the amount of pollen exposure. Author asserts this leads to an epidemic of allergies/asthma. Author asserts this indirectly leads to cancer. Author fails to apparently take into account that although we are exposed to more male trees than female trees, our to…
One thing that isn't clear is how effective female trees are at removing pollen from the air. Is it possible that even with a much higher population but a more balanced sex ratio, there would still be a lower airborne pollen count?
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#7The only reason why we don't plant tons of edible fruit trees in city parks is because they would make a huge mess and attract rodents. But now that we're going to have self-driving robots that can clean up after the trees by the time they're old enough to produce fruit, there really isn't any reason why our park trees shouldn't be producing food for us.
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#8The 10 people who died from the pollen storm in Melbourne was interesting.
https://www.google.com.au/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9907120
It also interesting because it possibly only showed up because it hit the media, but it should have been see-able before if proper stats were kept over the long term.
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#9tl;dr Male trees were planted disproportionate to female trees in urban settings because they didn't shed messy seeds. The preponderance of male trees increases the amount of pollen exposure. Author asserts this leads to an epidemic of allergies/asthma. Author asserts this indirectly leads to cancer. Author fails to apparently take into account that although we are exposed to more male trees than female trees, our to…
One thing that isn't clear is how effective female trees are at removing pollen from the air. Is it possible that even with a much higher population but a more balanced sex ratio, there would still be a lower airborne pollen count?
Yes, that's the core premise made by the author: If we're going to plant male plants, either we plant female plants (which have evolved to take up the maximum amount of pollen possible) or our lungs take up the pollen (which results in biological issues).
There's an inflection point where the amount of pollen left in the air by a sparse male forest equals the amount of pollen left in the air by a dense balanced-ratio forest. The article doesn't say where that inflection point is, though — when you state that inflection point as "a balanced-ratio forest can be XYZ as dense as a male-only forest with same or lower pollen counts", XYZ could be 1.1x, 20x, 5000x. Extrapolating that to urban trees, with pollen measured at human face heights, would be the holy grail of prove-or-disprove the value of this approach.
It is very likely that trees evolved to pollinate no more than is necessary to deliver the correct amount of pollen to the trees near them. I cannot find any estimates of this percentage at all, so as with XYZ above, it could be 1%, 10%, or 99%. More science is definitely required in both forest-shaped configurations and urban-shaped pockets.
Re: Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies
#10If by "batonical sexism" we mean the choice to use male trees instead of female trees because it'd be a burden to clean up parts of the female tree that drop to the ground seasonally. It's a straightforward tradeoff: use male trees that produce pollen (and make it worse for allergies) or use female trees that have to get cleaned up (or plant both, and deal with both problems).
As the article notes, planting both actually reduces one of the problems: pollen. Female plants attract and capture pollen. So you will slightly increase litter while moderately reducing pollen.
Additionally, as the article also notes, all allergens are not created equal. Pollen is mostly notable insofar as it is allergenic; planting trees with low or nor allergenic pollen uncouples "pollen" and "pollen that causes allergies" levels.