But ragweed sufferers take note: according to François Tardif, an associate professor at the University of Guelph, the new strain won’t have much of an impact on your allergies. “There is so much ragweed out there that the pollen from resistant plants is like a drop in the ocean.”

Rather, farmers are the ones who will suffer the most. This new strain is so resistant that it can easily take over farmers’ fields, wreaking havoc on the harvesting of crops.

Although other herbicides can be used, they are not as effective as glyphosate. Soybean crops are most affected by glysophate-resistant ragweed, which can have a significant impact in the food industry because, as any soy-allergic individual knows: soy and its derivative soy lecithin are found in many packaged foods.

A quality of life survey conducted by Decima Research for Reactine gives lie to the popular notion that these 40 sufferers are not, well, suffering. Of the 40 employees with hay fever, the survey shows that 23 feel irritable, 22 experience reduced productivity, 17 find their social interactions to be hindered, 10 report reduced libido and five feel “unattractive or unbearable.” Sniffing and sneezing aside, the data suggest that many of them suffer in silence, and not only physically but socially, psychologically and professionally.

What’s in a Name?

Medical professionals say the very name “hay fever” conveys a merely irksome affliction that should be toughed out. Among non-sufferers, there are contradictory perceptions of this condition. In the Decima survey, 83 per cent of staff in an organization’s human resources department – the gatekeepers of employee performance evaluations – say seasonal allergies affect productivity at work. But only 66 per cent of those HR workers consider allergies to be a valid reason to take time off.

Toronto family doctor Dr. Alan Kaplan, chair of the Family Physician Airways Group of Canada, calls hay fever a misnomer, as it has little to do with hay and no fever results from an attack. He much prefers the medical term “seasonal allergic rhinitis,” which captures the congestion, mucous overproduction and sneezing symptoms of the season. The itchy, watery eyes that are usually part of the package are properly referred to as allergic conjunctivitis.

Dr. Jeremy Beach, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Alberta, says the term hay fever trivializes the condition, making people wrongly think “you shouldn’t really worry about it.” In fact, especially in concert with non-seasonal triggers, allergic rhinitis can have a significant effect. Beach, who has a particular interest in work-related asthma and allergies, believes that academics and scientists have “under-researched” this insidious affliction because “it is not seen as life-threatening whereas other types of allergy can be.”

Part of allergic rhinitis’s profile problem is that Canada has no broad national strategy to bring it into the spotlight, says Dr. Harold Kim, an allergist in Kitchener, Ontario, who holds academic appointments at McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario. He says family doctors search for symptoms of breast cancer, cardiac disease, high blood pressure and cholesterol, but most physicians, except for allergists, do not commonly ask about allergy symptoms. “In my experience, patients must be proactive and request an allergy assessment,” he says.

Kim is hopeful this could change with the publication in the Canadian Journal of Otolaryngology in April 2007 of “excellent guidelines” for doctors to diagnose and treat allergic rhinitis. Getting the guidelines put into practice, however, has gone slower than expected: “The problems of implementing revolve around issues of how to change human behaviour,” he explains. “It is not easy.” Having helped to produce the protocols, Kim’s priorities are to have them modified for patients, and to get the word out to doctors and patients alike.

At Work, But Not All There

It has been workplace and classroom productivity research that is gradually shining a light in this dim corner. Our society’s obsession with efficiency and productivity has clashed with the millions of people with rhinitis who just can’t keep up. The result is what management gurus and occupational health specialists call “presenteeism,” or lost productivity while at work.

Last year the Journal of Management Studies reported that increasingly “employees were substituting presenteeism for absenteeism”: they showed up while ill or injured more often than they stayed home. An article in Current Medical Research and Opinion singled out allergic rhinitis as the top reason for presenteeism and lost productivity at 47 workplaces studied in the United States. Calculations revealed that allergic rhinitis sufferers were absent only 3.6 days per year, but were unproductive on average for 2.3 hours per workday. The study determined allergic rhinitis cost the companies $593 per employee per year. That’s ahead of high stress ($518) and more than twice the amount for other conditions including migraines ($277), arthritis ($269), and respiratory infections ($181).

Vancouver allergist Dr. Donald Stark explains that “allergies are a type of chronic inflammation, so the body dealing with inflammation is tiring in itself. Even if [people with allergies] fall asleep, some don’t get into the deeper stages of sleep because their airways get obstructed, and they start to toss and turn to get to breath again.” Stark adds that allergy sufferers don’t even have to feel consciously tired to function poorly. “There are studies that show some adverse effect on performance at school or work – there is some amount of impairment.”

Robin Bayley of Victoria knows about lost productivity. Working from home as a privacy and policy consultant, she says the strong antihistamines she takes for rhinitis “blow (her) schedule out of the water.” She dreads the spring pollen season when her eyes water so much that the skin around them gets chapped. “I once went on vacation in Arizona, and my eyes were so watery and swollen I could barely see the Grand Canyon.” When his allergic rhinitis peaks, Gary Blaney, an Ottawa lawyer, says he gets so tired that he has to limit client meetings to the morning. “The air conditioning in my office helps keep me clear in the morning, but the aching and fatigue begin to take their toll after lunch,” he says. “By the time I get home, I feel miserable and wiped out.”

Suffer the Children

While many adults struggle with the discomfort of rhinitis by modifying routines, using over-the-counter meds or by simply toughing it out, the effect of allergic rhinitis on children is even more severe because their condition can remain undiagnosed ….

Excerpted from the Spring 2008 issue of Allergic Living magazine.
To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Related Reading

• Outdoor Allergies Resource Hub – a compilation of our best.
• Sneeze-free Garden – create the perfect low-allergen garden.
• Hay Fever Handbook – all you’ll need to cope.
• Trees that Make You Sneeze
• Ragweed’s Rule – investigating the worst of the allergenic weeds.
• Stinging Insect Allergies – when is it a serious reaction?

© Copyright AGW Publishing Inc.

WE CAN blame the deciduous trees’ attempts at procreation for our watery, red-eyed snuffling and other springtime rhinitis symptoms. Catkins, which often appear as elaborate cones or buds, are a tree’s reproductive organs, and they bloom before the leaves bud. Male catkins will release literally millions of pollen grains into the air in an attempt to find a female catkin match.

Dr. Wilf Nicholls, director of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Botanical Garden, explains that wind pollination is “super inefficient” because only a fraction of the huge amounts of tiny grains the tree churns out will arrive at their intended destination, the female catkin. Instead, great quantities of them will be inhaled into noses and throats and set off reactions in the tree allergic.

It’s an unlucky break that most deciduous trees in northern climes are wind-pollinated. Birch, elm, maple, oak and poplar are some of the most allergenic trees across Canada and the northern United States. But where you are, the month and the weather all influence the onset of symptoms.

West Coast

On the foliage-rich west coast, red alder is public enemy number one. Robert Guy, head of forest sciences at the University of British Columbia, says much of the forest surrounding coastal towns and cities is full of red alder. Depending on the weather, these trees can pollinate as early as mid-February, or as late as the end of March, and they spread pollen for about three weeks.

Vancouver allergist Dr. Donald Stark says red alder is particularly insidious because it produces a ton of pollen; it often has the highest pollen count of any plant on the coast. People allergic to it may also react to birch trees, which pollinate about a month after alders, prolonging the misery.

Stark identifies the Garry oak as another culprit on the west coast.
In most of Canada, ragweed is the worst offender for triggering hay fever, followed by grass, then trees. Stark says the west coast is the exception: here, trees pack the hardest punch.

Next: Traveling Eastward

Debbie Honickman, a Toronto family doctor, never had hay fever as a child. Then in her forties, she started to react to grass in the spring, and could suddenly empathize with her allergy-suffering patients.

At first she found her symptoms so difficult “I thought, I can’t stand it!” Such was Honickman’s seasonal grief that she even contemplated leaving her province the following spring – “but I love the spring here because I love birding.”

She rhymes off her symptoms: “I feel congested, I have post-nasal drip, I snore more.” Honickman knows to expect a prolonged bout with ragweed in the fall as well – then a few years ago, she also developed allergic asthma. “I actually have to use an inhaler when my symptoms get bad. I had never had asthma in my life.”

As the grass and trees begin their spring pollinating ritual, many of us suffer with Honickman. More than five million Canadians have seasonal allergic rhinitis, commonly called hay fever. In fact, Canada has one of the highest rates of both allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma in the world, and the United States ranks only slightly behind.

The numbers of North Americans living with environmental allergies has risen rapidly. With so many suddenly suffering, Allergic Living offers this comprehensive guide – examining pollen’s havoc and the most effective means of turning off the weeping, the sneezing, the congestion and the misery.

What is Hay Fever?

As with other allergies, seasonal allergic rhinitis is an immune system over-response to a protein, in this case an inhaled pollen or a mould spore. Antibodies are supposed to protect our bodies, to defend, but the immune system of a person predisposed to allergy can mistakenly identify a certain protein – perhaps birch tree pollen – as an invader and begin to create antibodies against it.

These antibodies, which are called Immunoglobulin E or IgE, attach themselves to mast cells, which are abundant in the nose, eyes, lungs and gastrointestinal tract. When the offending pollen is again encountered, the IgE antibodies grab it, triggering the mast cells to release powerful chemicals, including histamine. This causes the allergic reaction.

Allergic rhinitis is often confused with irritant or non-allergic rhinitis, which is triggered by air pollution, smoke, strong odous or medication. Some people with hay fever or allergic rhinitis find that such irritants will further aggravate their allergic symptoms.

Symptoms

In hay fever, these are the itchy, watery, puffy eyes, runny nose and sneezing that are the stuff of medication ads.

When an allergic individual is exposed to a seasonal allergen, the chemical reaction begins: blood vessels dilate in the eyes and nose, the mucous membranes secrete fluids, and the itching and sneezing start. All this discomfort leads to sleep loss, fatigue, irritability and difficulty concentrating.

Sometimes the symptoms are confused with those of a cold. But Dr. Harold Kim, an allergist based in Kitchener, Ontario, says itchiness is a prime indication that allergies are the culprit. Another clue that it’s not a virus is that you won’t get better in a week or so.

“If symptoms are due to pollens such as trees and grass, they will last over a season,” Kim says. In addition, if the sufferer has asthma, he or she may experience shortness of breath, coughing or wheezing.

Next: How to Pollen and Mold-Proof

The ragweed in my backyard in the Ottawa Valley waves at me smugly every morning. It has formed a towering wall along the back corner of the small meadow we’ve let flourish as an environmental gesture. All the other wildflowers in the meadow co-exist happily, but the ragweed, which characteristically found a toehold in the least promising soil, has now started to elbow its way toward to the front. Unfortunately, its braggadocio is well-founded.

Not only is ragweed an aggressive competitor, it is an able procreator that produces pollen of unrivaled allergic potency. Its pollen triggers reactions in up to 75 per cent of hay fever sufferers, depending on where they live in North America, making this one weed to be reckoned with.

Operation Proliferate

The tens of millions of Americans who now suffer from ragweed allergies can thank Canada for their misery. Common ragweed’s likely point of origin in North America was Ontario, according to Dr. Peter Creticos, clinical director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. He jokingly calls ragweed “Canada’s gift to the colonies,” referring to the plant’s ability to dump hundreds of thousand of tons of dust-like pollen across up to 1,000 kilometres of the continent every year.

Now ragweed can be found all across eastern and central Canada and the United States, though there is thankfully little of it west of the Rockies. The crown-shaped seeds are highly mobile and have even deployed overseas, particularly near existing and former Canadian and U.S. military bases in Western Europe.

Creticos suspects the seeds hitched a ride on equipment shipped from North America during and after the wars, then launched a horticultural offensive into Eastern Europe, where it now enjoys a strong presence. For allergy sufferers, misery loves company.

Flourishing on the Farm

Back in North America, common ragweed and its big brother, giant ragweed, are causing havoc in the crop farming sector. Clarence Swanton, a University of Guelph professor and weed scientist, says ragweed grows well along roadsides and train tracks, but really loves the rich, loosely tilled soil of corn, soybean and cereal crop fields.

“Ragweed seedlings emerge early and therefore are very competitive with the crop for light, water and nutrients,” he says. Swanton estimates bean crop losses in Ontario alone range from 8 to 30 per cent, representing millions of dollars annually.

The Ontario government’s chief of weed control, Mike Cowbrough, says uncontrolled ragweed can cause yield losses of up to 80 per cent in some operations – a financial disaster for farmers. He says ragweed is one of the toughest weeds to control: it takes repeated mowings to prevent the plant from blossoming, its seeds can remain dormant for up to 50 years, and several strains have become resistant to traditional herbicides.

In the United States especially, some ragweed has even become immune to glyphosate (known in the retail sector as Roundup), once thought to be the magic bullet for weed control.

Frustrated farmers with glyphosate-resistant ragweed are creating herbicidal blends, incorporating older herbicides like 2,4-D and dicamba in hopes that their ragweed is not resistant to those mixtures. But farmers who market organic produce are in a conundrum, since herbicides are a no-no. Control often has to be done mechanically with a cultivator, which can speed soil erosion, or even manually.

Soybean farmers must also contend with ragweed’s staining quality, which can turn the pristine white soybean – and the tofu it’s used to make – to an unappealing shade of green.

Next Page: The Problem Grows