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Sneezes, wheezes, tears: What's in store for this spring's allergy season?

About two weeks ago, I'd have guessed we were in for a miserable spring allergy season. One afternoon, about half of our family members -- the ones who are sensitive to pollen -- came down with the classic symptoms: sneezing, sniffling and itching, watery eyes.

After consulting a few experts, I've updated my guess about the upcoming allergy season to a big, "Who knows? But I hope it's easy on us."

"A lot of early symptoms (are) due to breakup," explained Dr. Melinda Rathkopf, a board member with the Alaska Chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America who works and treats patients at the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Center of Alaska.

In winter, icy roads get treated with dirt and gravel, which means more dirt and gravel to kick up into the air when conditions are right. Because road dirt/gravel/dust allergy symptoms are similar to what people experience with hay fever, aka allergic rhinitis, the symptoms may not be truly pollen generated, Rathkopf said.

Rathkopf says "may not be," because it's difficult to know for certain. Traditionally, allergy season in Alaska begins in late April and early May. Because pollen counts aren't done year-round, capturing the first release of pollen is tricky.

"We have never been able to truly to determine how early," Rathkopf said. "Every time in the last five years that they have started there has already been detectable pollens," she said.

When the count began in 2012, on May 8, the pollen count was at its peak high reading that very day, according to data maintained by the city of Anchorage. Historically, pollen can flare up quickly, within a matter of days.

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And the people who monitor the equipment and conduct the counts "are seeing earlier pollen trends," Rathkopf said.

The Municipality of Anchorage started its count on April 21 last year, and the birch pollen peak occurred on May 5, the same day as in 2014, according to Anne Schlapia, who works for the Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services' air quality program. "That's about 10 days earlier than we had seen in years with longer winters," Schlapia said via email.

The city maintains a pollen and mold calendar that shows the average pollen trends for each type of plant. Trees tend to hit in May; grasses and weeds in June; and mold starts in June and stays present until fall.

Getting back to trends, the people who study Alaska's plants and trees have made some useful observations for those of us who need to arm ourselves for the annual allergy battle. First, pollen counts seem to rise and fall each year, putting the highs and lows on a biennial cycle.

Some of you may recall 2014 as the year of the great allergy invasion, when pollen counts spiked extremely high at 2,862 grains per cubic meter of air, and air quality was made even worse with smoke from widespread wildfires. But a year later -- 2015 -- was a mild year for pollen spread and allergy woes. The measured high count in Anchorage that year was 99 grains per cubic meter of air.

That means 2016 is likely to be a high pollen year. It doesn't mean it will be as high as 2014 -- only that it is likely to be higher than in 2015.

With respect to birch trees, one of the more notorious allergen producers, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks discovered that by the time green-up occurs, pollen has already started its spread.

In a 2008 article, UAF's Ned Rozell explained that Jim Anderson, a biosciences librarian fascinated by pollen, "... found that birch trees begin releasing pollen about two days before leaves emerge from buds, and the concentration of birch pollen is greatest about three days after the leaves come out. He measured more than 4,500 grains of birch pollen per cubic meter on the highest pollen days."

More recently, in early 2015, Jan Dawe, another UAF researcher, predicted that birch trees that release loads of seeds (from the female flowers), prior to releasing catkins (the male "pods" that contain sperm and pollen), won't have a high pollen year. If the trees spend a lot of energy making lots of seeds, the trees won't need to spend energy making so many catkins. The rusty-colored seeds were abundant last year, and sure enough, 2015 was a low pollen year.

Here's the curveball. Milder winters have seemed to keep us in a perpetual breakup cycle, the term that describes Alaska's annual transition out of the icy grip of winter and into weeks of muddy, slushy freezing and thawing. Those same winters have also encouraged earlier spring growth.

The birch tree outside my house has small buds on the very top branches, but otherwise doesn't look close to unfurling its first bright-green leaf. So was my family reacting to road dust or to an early plant allergen a few weeks ago? Even though Rathkopf suspects the former, I still wonder if something else might have been in the air that day, some early growing weed, tree, willow -- pretty much anything that pollinates -- that decided to start its mating cycle early this year.

Alas, there's no way to know. The trees don't appear to be further along than in the last two years, but that's not really enough to go on.

"We have no way of knowing without pollen numbers," Schlapia said.

This season, the Anchorage counts may be delayed because the equipment used to measure pollen counts in the city is switching hands. Rathkopf's clinic will start conducting the counts, while equipment will be moved to the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Funding ran out for the city to keep doing the counts about two years ago. In the interim the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Center of Alaska and Providence Alaska Medical Center came up with funds to supplement the program. But now, a clinic and university-based system seems to make the most sense, one that isn't dependent on state funds, Rathkopf said. UAA will help with the collection, while the clinic will do the counts.

"Our goal in the future would be to move up the pollen initiation date so we can capture these trends," Rathkopf said.

Jill Burke is a longtime Alaska journalist writing from the center of a busy family life. She and her young daughter receive treatment at the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Center of Alaska. Her father swore by "Burke's Law No. 1 -- never take no for an answer." Meaning, don't give up in the face of adversity. The lesson stuck. Share your ideas with her at jill@alaskadispatch.com, on Facebook or on Twitter.

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Jill Burke

Jill Burke is a former writer and columnist for Alaska Dispatch News.

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