Comment by NoImmatureAdHom
5 hours ago
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.
>Argue that lots of pollen leads to more allergies.
With pollen, particulate size tends to matter. Pine tree pollen is very rarely an allergen because the pollen grains are huge, and I believe the body catches and rejects these pretty easily. Tiny pollen grains and ones with particular shapes can get much deeper in the lungs and aggravate things more easily.
Also, different species flower and release pollen at different times.
A monoculture forest releases all its pollen at once, instead of a fraction of it always being in flower throughout spring/summer.