Spring in Hawke's Bay begins with pine pollen clouds

Pollen invaded the air in Te Pohue this week. Photo / Paul Taylor

Spring has truly sprung if the yellow pollen on every conceivable surface is anything to go by, and unfortunately for allergy sufferers it is only the beginning of pollen season.

Palynologist (pollen scientist) Katherine Holt said the yellow pollen people were seeing everywhere in Hawke's Bay was pine pollen.

"At this time of the year pine pollen season is still going, but it's not at its peak," Holt said.

"There's a common misconception that it's pine pollen which causes allergies, but pine pollen is not allergenic.

"It's too big and waxy to breathe in through the airways. Oak and birch, which start releasing pollen now, are far more allergenic and can be quite triggering.

"The pollen is smaller, which makes people more susceptible to them."

She said, as a region, Hawke's Bay had higher amounts of pine pollen in the air compared with some other major cities.

"Hawke's Bay has forests and a lot more rural hinterland which lends itself to higher amounts of pine pollen. Hawke's Bay also has a lot of olive trees and olive pollen is quite allergenic."

She said warm, dry, windy conditions were ideal for pollen.

"Those conditions make it worse for allergy sufferers as well."

Mostly harmless pine pollen, pictured over Te Pohue, is nevertheless annoying as it coats every surface with yellow. Photo / Paul Taylor

However, there was no real way of being prepared for a pollen ambush.

"There needs to be pollen monitoring and forecasting done on a regular basis but there isn't.

"Sites like MetService do put up pollen updates but they base that on data which was a taken a long time ago. Since then the vegetation around the region has changed quite a bit."

Holt said regular pollen monitoring, like what is done in Australian cities like Canberra, would not just help allergy sufferers but also reduce the burden on our health system, especially in the Covid environment.

"In Canberra they put out a post on social media daily about pollen in the air. It allows people more control over their response to their health.

"The Government needs to fund dedicated monitoring of pollen. Given that New Zealand has some of the highest rates of allergy sufferers, it is critical we start monitoring what we are dealing with.

"And it's only going to get worse due to climate change."

Rewi Newnham, in an article published in August, said that in New Zealand, where Allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (AR) or hay fever prevalence was high, efforts to monitor airborne pollen had been limited.

Newnham is a professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington, with extensive experience in monitoring airborne pollen in the UK and New Zealand.

"Arguably the information currently available to practitioners and patients is out of date or even erroneous, given various environmental transformations of the past few decades, involving plant communities, land use and climate change," he states.

"International research shows that warmer temperatures and progressively increasing atmospheric Co2 levels can lead to higher levels of pollen production, lengthening pollen seasons and increasing their severity.

"The spread of existing and new invasive plant species, in part promoted by climate change, have influenced the sources, timing and amounts of airborne pollen allergens.

"New Zealand, with strong economic dependency on introduced pasture grasses with allergenic potential, has not been exempted from these recent environmental changes,
yet has no means to measure their aerobiological and public health impacts."

He echoed Holt's sentiments about health benefits around pollen monitoring.

He said systematic, routine airborne pollen monitoring at the key population centres would provide a means for measuring health impacts.

"They would provide a more realistic basis for the treatment and management of patient symptoms, enable short- and longer-term pollen forecasting and promote stronger awareness and understanding of pollen allergies across the wider community."