Top 100 in Allergies
For those of you who are allergic, this is a very interesting ranking of the Top 100 worst places for people with seasonal allergies. When moving to a new place most people don’t think about this aspect, so it’s interesting. I think it’s a little bunk, since I would assume rural areas would be worse than cities (i.e. if, like me, you are allergic to hay or corn pollen) but none are listed…that makes no sense. I thought it would be more regionally clustered, but it really isn’t.
I think a lot is made of food allergies and seasonal allergies, but not much for those of us that have constant allergies. For example, it would be great to know the cities that had the least number of trees, pollution, and animal ownership. I don’t know how you’d measure it, but I’d like to know the places that least allow animals in public buildings. I can’t really shop somewhere that does because even if I can take being in the store itself, I don’t want to bring tainted goods back home!
2 Comments so far
1. Richard wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Hmmm…some of what they are trying to teach me here must be rubbing off.
So first of all the site says only “metro” areas were included, so that explains why rural places don’t show up. The PDF doesn’t say which “metro” areas were included.
Secondly they are correlating use of allergy medications and the number of allergy specialists with places that are bad for allergies. Even if rural areas had been included in the pollen counts, I’d guess that metro areas would still have more specialists. And this seems to not account for the fact that rural or economically depressed areas might not be able to support an allergy specialist. Notice how the states with lower population aren’t allergy centers.
Gee why would they do that…let’s see who’s on the board. Huh…who’d a thunk that lots of execs from pharmacutical companies might sponsor this research…
At the same time urban/rural may not matter. When I lived in Denver there was an article about how bad pollen in Denver was. When they had gone through a tree planing program it was decided to not plant any “girl” trees because they’d drop berries and other nasty things. Instead mostly “boy” trees were planted. This meant in the spring the boy trees were getting randy with your nose. An arborist might have more to say about the truth of this.
Should we start Allergy Sufferers Against Library Cats (ASALC)?
2. jennybento wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Well my question was more why non-metro areas were not included.
I interpreted it as the places with less specialists would be rated worse, making rural areas again worse.
New Haven, CT has that same male/female tree issue, by the way.
While I have NO question this is skewed, it’s still interesting. Personally the number of allergy specialists does not really affect my allergies, as long as it’s greater than 0. Also I think it’s skewed re: pollution. Pollution totally affects breathing allergies!
Library cats are so wrong! My college bookstore had cats too! It was the worst!