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
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, maybe it was 200 years ago and by now the population has become immune, or maybe the tree pollen in Japan is just more aggressive...).
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
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 diversity.
I grew up on a farm and was constantly exposed to all kinds of soil, vegetables, animals, trees, well forests, grasses and hay.. and I never had any kind of allergies.
However, when I moved to another European country I had severe reactions to the local mosquitoes. Not that it was itching very much or anything, just that it was bleeding like crazy. I would wake up in the morning and look like I had been through an especially messy vampire attack during the night. Bloody forearms, ankles..
It took a year, and then I got used to it and stopped having any reaction whatsoever (same as in my home country). No bumps, no itching.
Then Japan.. and the same happened, with the local mosquitoes. Bleeding like hell. It took slightly longer, but I did get used to that as well, so now there are no problems.
And.. I got itchy eyes when I travelled to Japan. As I said, I've never been allergic to anything. I didn't have sneezes or the like, but it was problematic. I tried to wash my eyes with salty water every day, and I got eye drops.. this went on for several years while I kept visiting Japan (I always stayed for long periods). Last year I finally concluded that it was actually the Sakura trees.. (The Cherry Blossoms) which caused it. And this year the symptoms are close to non-existing, so I'm concluding that I'm getting used to that as well (and I have visited Sugi forests many times over the years too, and no problems there). Hopefully.
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.
Doesn't pollen also have to do with the "gender" of the trees? In gendered trees, male trees emit pollen and female trees intercept pollen. Not all species of trees are gendered (dioecious) but various are. If reforestation uses male trees at the expense of female, then pollen count will be higher.
Urban developers who make the mistake of using male trees, because they don't drop fruit/berries/seed pods, will make the residents suffer pollen. Sugi and hinoki apparently are not gendered -- they're monoecious.
I think its the same in Germany no? Heuschnupfen is something that got worse over the time and if i remember correct is as well related with some reforest project..
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.
Allergies are weird. I definitely became more sensitive to hay fever after a gastric bypass.
I have a friend who for no apparent reason developed strong allergies in their sixties. Particularly to goats milk.
So much so that they will not go to a restaurant that has goat milk products (e.g.: halloumi cheese) in their kitchen due to one too many visits to the hospital emergency ward.
My father also developed allergies in his sixties. And it got worse and worse. Soon he was becoming lactose intolerant as well, and had to start with gluten-free food. He could never be near oranges, unless they were grown without pesticides - the remains on the outside was enough to trigger a reaction. Then he couldn't eat farmed salmon, though he could still eat wild salmon. But there was more and more wild fish he couldn't eat either, which did hurt a fish lover like him. And on and on it went, until he was severely limited to what he could eat and what he could get exposed to.
Then one day he noticed that the mayonnaise he enjoyed every day contained a conservation additive (an E-type, as is how they're labelled in Europe) which he knew he used to have some reaction to in the past, another food product included it and he had avoided that one since like forever. So he quit the mayonnaise when he noticed that. But what happened next was astonishing - all his allergies, lactose intolerance and everything disappeared, and not much later he didn't have any issues with anything.
>Every year, an area is selectively clear-cut, removing sugi, hinoki but also other invasive species like bamboo. Broadleaf trees are left, and with more sun coming through to the ground, they grow back, along with other new seedlings either planted by staff or brought by birds or animals.
In other parts of the world, some plantation -> forest projects don't remove trees but instead pull them over and leave them as logs with exposed roots. This provides new habitats for various plants and animals around the logs and the gap in the canopy. I'm curious if they've explored the impacts that approach would have.
I was surprised to read that our allergies evolve, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. When I lived in the midwest of the USA, I hated mowing the lawn so much. I became a gunked-up mess with my sinuses packed with snot, regardless of antihistamines and (new at the time) allergy meds that presaged our present treatments.
I'd lived in the Bay Area for one or two months before a neighbor in my apartment complex knocked to ask if it was standard to not have an air conditioner in the residence (something that had surprised me as well). She said that keeping the windows open was aggravating her allergies and it was the first moment that I realized I could breathe easily through my nose. I don't know what grows where I grew up that isn't here, but getting away from it really changed my quality of life.
Severe allergies can be so intrusive that I'd consider moving out of the country if I was in the situation described in this article. But I only think that because I've experienced the effect of changing regions and experiencing a radically different outcome. If someone grew up with this being normal, they might never consider getting away. I certainly didn't think it could be better or worse if I lived someplace else.
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 treatment (two sessions per week) the pollen season started. The air felt "heavy to breathe" but to my surprise I was not effected that year at all. After finishing the whole treatment I was allergy free for many years. Now I sometimes feel it on bad days with clouds of pollen hanging in humid air. My uneducated guess is, that my acupuncture treatment I received over 2 decades ago "wears off".
I wonder if others experienced similar or if I was a statistical outlier to a well shaped Gauss curve?
> Medicine is another prong to the attack, with the development of new treatments to better ease the symptoms of pollen exposure. One Japanese trial, for example, showed a long-acting under-the-tongue immunotherapy tablet was were still helping alleviate symptoms two years after treatment. Other scientists have even been experimenting with genetically modified rice designed to alleviate allergy symptoms.
Half-way through the article:
"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 wood from other countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia."
As often in environmental health, the cost-benefit ratio is calculated after the exposure is widespread, i.e. too late.
The US states of Oregon and Washington were major exporters of raw logs to Japan as well.
The 1962 Columbus Day Storm [1] fell 11.2 billion board feet of timber, which flooded the market and initiated heavy overseas demand. Exports peaked in the 80's. But when the export levels fell and old growth timber became more scarce, local economies of exporting regions took a big hit. The port of Coos Bay for example had a big downturn with lumber being the primary cargo of ships. Coos Bay is the only deep-water coastal harbor in Oregon and the largest between San Francisco and the Puget Sound.
40 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] threadI 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
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.
Then Japan.. and the same happened, with the local mosquitoes. Bleeding like hell. It took slightly longer, but I did get used to that as well, so now there are no problems.
And.. I got itchy eyes when I travelled to Japan. As I said, I've never been allergic to anything. I didn't have sneezes or the like, but it was problematic. I tried to wash my eyes with salty water every day, and I got eye drops.. this went on for several years while I kept visiting Japan (I always stayed for long periods). Last year I finally concluded that it was actually the Sakura trees.. (The Cherry Blossoms) which caused it. And this year the symptoms are close to non-existing, so I'm concluding that I'm getting used to that as well (and I have visited Sugi forests many times over the years too, and no problems there). Hopefully.
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.
Urban developers who make the mistake of using male trees, because they don't drop fruit/berries/seed pods, will make the residents suffer pollen. Sugi and hinoki apparently are not gendered -- they're monoecious.
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.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
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.
I have a friend who for no apparent reason developed strong allergies in their sixties. Particularly to goats milk.
So much so that they will not go to a restaurant that has goat milk products (e.g.: halloumi cheese) in their kitchen due to one too many visits to the hospital emergency ward.
Then one day he noticed that the mayonnaise he enjoyed every day contained a conservation additive (an E-type, as is how they're labelled in Europe) which he knew he used to have some reaction to in the past, another food product included it and he had avoided that one since like forever. So he quit the mayonnaise when he noticed that. But what happened next was astonishing - all his allergies, lactose intolerance and everything disappeared, and not much later he didn't have any issues with anything.
In other parts of the world, some plantation -> forest projects don't remove trees but instead pull them over and leave them as logs with exposed roots. This provides new habitats for various plants and animals around the logs and the gap in the canopy. I'm curious if they've explored the impacts that approach would have.
I'd lived in the Bay Area for one or two months before a neighbor in my apartment complex knocked to ask if it was standard to not have an air conditioner in the residence (something that had surprised me as well). She said that keeping the windows open was aggravating her allergies and it was the first moment that I realized I could breathe easily through my nose. I don't know what grows where I grew up that isn't here, but getting away from it really changed my quality of life.
Severe allergies can be so intrusive that I'd consider moving out of the country if I was in the situation described in this article. But I only think that because I've experienced the effect of changing regions and experiencing a radically different outcome. If someone grew up with this being normal, they might never consider getting away. I certainly didn't think it could be better or worse if I lived someplace else.
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 treatment (two sessions per week) the pollen season started. The air felt "heavy to breathe" but to my surprise I was not effected that year at all. After finishing the whole treatment I was allergy free for many years. Now I sometimes feel it on bad days with clouds of pollen hanging in humid air. My uneducated guess is, that my acupuncture treatment I received over 2 decades ago "wears off".
I wonder if others experienced similar or if I was a statistical outlier to a well shaped Gauss curve?
There is. Sorta
Half-way through the article: "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 wood from other countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia."
As often in environmental health, the cost-benefit ratio is calculated after the exposure is widespread, i.e. too late.
by the time the 10-20 year timeline finished, situation changed enough for the plan to not be followed
The 1962 Columbus Day Storm [1] fell 11.2 billion board feet of timber, which flooded the market and initiated heavy overseas demand. Exports peaked in the 80's. But when the export levels fell and old growth timber became more scarce, local economies of exporting regions took a big hit. The port of Coos Bay for example had a big downturn with lumber being the primary cargo of ships. Coos Bay is the only deep-water coastal harbor in Oregon and the largest between San Francisco and the Puget Sound.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day_storm_of_1962