alt.hn

5/20/2026 at 1:43:06 AM

Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260515-the-1950s-blunder-which-causes-mass-hay-fever-in-japan

by ranit

5/20/2026 at 2:27:35 PM

> A 1950s project is to blame

Half-way through the article: "When the sugi and hinoki forests were first planted in the 1950s and 60s, they weren't meant to stand forever. At the time, it was assumed they would be gradually cut down and replanted over time, as had been the case before the war. But as Japan's economy boomed in the late 60s and 70s, major cities like Kobe and Tokyo grew rapidly, and it ended up being cheaper to import wood from other countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia."

As often in environmental health, the cost-benefit ratio is calculated after the exposure is widespread, i.e. too late.

by rouvax

5/20/2026 at 5:43:41 PM

The US states of Oregon and Washington were major exporters of raw logs to Japan as well.

The 1962 Columbus Day Storm [1] fell 11.2 billion board feet of timber, which flooded the market and initiated heavy overseas demand. Exports peaked in the 80's. But when the export levels fell and old growth timber became more scarce, local economies of exporting regions took a big hit. The port of Coos Bay for example had a big downturn with lumber being the primary cargo of ships. Coos Bay is the only deep-water coastal harbor in Oregon and the largest between San Francisco and the Puget Sound.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day_storm_of_1962

by pugworthy

5/20/2026 at 5:07:14 PM

I don't understand what you're saying, isn't it exact opposite - too early?

by the time the 10-20 year timeline finished, situation changed enough for the plan to not be followed

by NooneAtAll3

5/20/2026 at 8:25:55 AM

Hmm, most German forests are also vast monoculture 'tree farms' and have been for the last 250 years (also caused by large scale deforestation in the centuries before). In the Ore Mountains we also have those yellow clouds of pollen coming off spruce trees every few years, covering everything with a thin yellow dust layer, yet I'm not aware that the number of people with pollen allergies is exceptionally high (oth, maybe it was 200 years ago and by now the population has become immune, or maybe the tree pollen in Japan is just more aggressive...).

by flohofwoe

5/20/2026 at 9:14:13 AM

The spruce and other local conifers (I live by the Bohemian Forest/Bayerischer Wald) have pollen that seems to be low allergenic by design. I know a lot of people who are allergic to birch or weed pollen, but not to spruce.

by efesak

5/20/2026 at 10:55:55 AM

By design? Who designed the pollen in those trees?

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 11:00:13 AM

I read it as "breeds selected to be low-allergenic" by the relative orgs that I assume (re)planted them there but I have no real idea about german forests and the processes of planting trees there.

by freehorse

5/20/2026 at 5:40:46 PM

No. Just some trees that produce pollen aren't particularly allergenic.

by indoordin0saur

5/20/2026 at 8:47:51 PM

So by coincidence, not by design then.

by noselasd

5/20/2026 at 6:22:44 PM

Different pollen have different weights. If you're seeing yellow dust laying on the ground then it's likely to be a heavy pollen that won't bother many people unless they actively stir it up. Example: People with pine allergies aren't really bothered unless they play in the pine needles and stir it up.

Not familiar with the biology of the matter. But I would assume there are advantages and disadvantages to the weight of the pollen in how it disperses and pollinates.

by SapporoChris

5/20/2026 at 3:38:57 PM

I assume they meant the people who planted those "tree farms", that they chose trees people were less allergic to.

by Izkata

5/20/2026 at 1:08:23 PM

I guess they meant 'by nature', but maybe not, which will be fun to hear!

by IrishTechie

5/20/2026 at 9:09:45 AM

I moved to Germany as an adult from a completely separate biome, and I’ve got terrible problems with allergies I never had in my home country

by idiomaddict

5/20/2026 at 4:32:31 PM

I wonder to what degree it's about what you are used to. I grew up in Germany and never had allergies. However, after a few years in the Pacific Northwest I developed seasonal allergies that get worse every year.

by ajmurmann

5/20/2026 at 4:02:30 PM

Same here. Some of the worst seasonal allergies I've ever had was while living in Germany. I'm not sure what exactly was responsible; my guess at the time was some sort of grass but I don't know for sure.

by cluoma

5/20/2026 at 12:02:42 PM

Yes. I relate myself with that. If i am in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, no issues.. in Germany, i have terrible problems with allergies too.

by pelasaco

5/20/2026 at 10:43:57 AM

[flagged]

by thrownthatway

5/20/2026 at 10:58:36 AM

"A biome (/ˈbaɪ.oʊm/ BY-ohm) is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, animal life, and an ecosystem. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome

by eesmith

5/20/2026 at 11:36:27 PM

It’s the ”completely separate” claim I take issue with.

How can it be completely separate?

And anyway, as soon as you move one organism to another area, it brings with it all its commensal and parasitic organisms.

by thrownthatway

5/21/2026 at 4:52:20 AM

Because "completely" isn't read to include everything down to tardigrades and E.coli.

To start, here are examples of (seemingly knowledgeable) people using that phrase:

"The Atlantic lowland forest of Brazil comprises a completely separate biome from the Amazonian forests to the north and west, and is home to a rich array of endemic fauna and flora. Among over 200 endemic birds are at least ten endemic genera, including such spectacular species as the Seven-coloured Tanager (Tangara fastuosa)" - https://archive.org/details/atlasofbirdsdive0000unwi/mode/2u...

"Now called the pine-hemlock hardwood forest, or northern hardwoods, it had survived the axe, fire, and insects, and lay as an ecotone between deciduous forest to the south and coniferous forest to the north. Shelford considered it to be a third association of the transcontinental coniferous forest biome, while Clements viewed it as a completely separate biome." - https://archive.org/details/pioneerecologist00crok/mode/2up?...

We can see the first page of that latter paper at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1930076 .

It start "Plant ecologists have regarded an essentially complete difference in climax dominants as the basis for the recognition of the major plant communities called plant formations." then mentions how that "usually includes some wide-ranging species among the dominants" ending "It is the purpose of this paper to show that it is not always feasible to make sole use of the criteria of plant dominants and maintain the integrity of some of the impor-". (For a summary of the paper, go back to https://archive.org/details/pioneerecologist00crok/mode/2up?... .)

So "completely separate" should be read to mean something more like "essentially complete difference", and not "absolute difference".

by eesmith

5/20/2026 at 9:25:27 AM

Pollen allergies have definitely skyrocketed in Sweden. We used to be able to sit in an office and work all year without hearing people sniffle and sneeze.

Now it's like an epidemic, at least half the office is affected.

by INTPenis

5/20/2026 at 9:35:26 AM

Probably we can blame higher hygiene standards, or some other environmental factor for it. Forests haven't changed much in past decades.

Here in Finland I've never been affected by any kind of tree pollen at all, but somehow timothy grass pollen gives me horrible symptoms, forcing me to take antihistamine most of the summer. I lived my childhood near farmland and forests, so definitely got exposed to both forms of pollen at early age.

by reeredfdfdf

5/20/2026 at 10:55:07 AM

Yes timotej is my allergy as well.

And I got it as an adult, in 2009. So 26 years without any allergies, then suddenly, one summer in Helsingborg, the air was thick with pollen. I remember the smell was like cheese doodles in the air, musty.

Once I got back from an errand in the city my face was leaking, I walked to the pharmacy with blurry vision to get my first antihistamines. Ever since then every year june is a nightmare. It affects your sleep, so it affects every part of life.

And since then I've observed more and more pollen allergies around me, friends, co-workers, strangers on the bus. It's very prevalent.

I would not be surprised if humans caused this somehow with our modern city planning.

by INTPenis

5/20/2026 at 4:16:05 PM

> modern city planning

One theory has to do with sanitation and how well we've done at eliminating parasites. Some people have reported successfully curing allergies by giving themselves a hookworm infection.

> The fact that some local African languages contain no words to describe allergic symptoms could support this hypothesis, indicating that allergic diseases have never been a problem among these populations

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6585781/

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 11:29:58 AM

If only the US department of health had a bold vision on how to solve this.

by sitkack

5/20/2026 at 12:47:12 PM

Once you get sensitized, it gets worse every year, right?

Since my teenage years I was mildly allergic to pollen, and now in my adulthood it seems to be getting progressively worse. Each spring is worse than the previous one, and the antihistamines do less effect (or so I subjectively feel).

by the_af

5/20/2026 at 1:10:18 PM

Yes I think the occasional attacks of pollen get worse, but in the long term I'm more used to it and I've learned habits to alleviate.

For example taking the right kind of antihistamines, taking them in the evening before bed, and most important regular cleaning.

by INTPenis

5/20/2026 at 1:40:41 PM

That is the general pattern but not always. I never used to have allergies and then developed them a few years ago. Was very miserable for a couple months every year for about 5 years but they disappeared again a couple years ago. I tried a few things like taking a spoonful of local honey every day etc. Ultimately I don't know what made the difference sadly but I haven't been bothered by seasonal allergies for several years now.

by Yeroc

5/20/2026 at 3:02:47 PM

I've had seasonal allergies for decades and haven't seen them trend more intense, though some years have more allergens than others.

Personally I only take allergy medication maybe 50-100 days a year, and usually just a half dose. I have definitely heard from people with worse symptoms that they get a tolerance to medications so it may help to switch between them if you take them year round.

by ac29

5/20/2026 at 2:35:33 PM

Not _necessarily_. I had big problems with pollen when I was a kid, but very rarely, these days (there seems to be _something_ that causes me difficulty for a few weeks a year, but that's more or less it now).

by rsynnott

5/20/2026 at 10:03:35 AM

food is full of histamine, especially fish and fermented food which is considered healthy but some (MCAS, HIT) people are sensitive.

by skirge

5/20/2026 at 12:45:51 PM

Perhaps we can blame exposure to actual pathogens which resemble the pollen in some way, triggering a misdirected immune system response.

by mattmcknight

5/20/2026 at 12:47:22 PM

Trees react to climate change.

After droughts some release more pollen as a survival reaction

by croes

5/20/2026 at 11:11:27 AM

I kinda suspect it was the Covid. I didn’t have allergic reactions until I was infected with Covid. I don’t have proof though.

by markus_zhang

5/20/2026 at 4:37:27 PM

I got a dustmite allergy directly after a Covid infection. Also, I got no proof but it made me suspicious if there could have been a connection..

by dranudin

5/20/2026 at 4:51:43 PM

Yeah, pretty close to what I got. Man that sucks. But I can confirm that taking exercises helps.

by markus_zhang

5/20/2026 at 1:19:48 PM

Covid fucked with people in various, not easy to measure ways. Some effects went away (like losing smell and taste, but it took months for me), some... not so much.

When I get cold/sneezing (the usual non-flu winter sickness) I cough much more since covid, more thick sputum created in the lower part of the throat. Talked with few people around and they confirmed they feel similar effects.

Allergies could easily be another area where effects can be subtle but permanent in some individuals. My father's hair got almost completely white after he almost ended up on ventilation for example. We as family with 2 kids (back then babies) had covid at least 11-12 times so far (confirmed by tests, wife is a doctor), plus few other probably-but-not-tested. Most recent one last autumn was like immunity went to 0 again, was coughing away nasty stuff for another month. I am glad I just survived all that, some of that was mild and some was pretty harsh on body and mind.

by kakacik

5/20/2026 at 1:52:22 PM

I had exactly the same experience. After I contracted Covid, until last year, it usually took me 2 weeks to stop coughing after the other symptoms went away. I think what improved the situation is exercise. I started to sprint walk a lot since last year and so far I haven’t had any long cough since then.

My son also got asthma after Covid. But he also improved when he grew a bit older (now close to six). We still give him the pumps whenever he had a bad cold, though.

Hope you and your family get better. It is very nasty. It is not life threatening but threatens pretty much everything else.

by markus_zhang

5/20/2026 at 9:21:30 PM

Well said, thank you. Same thoughts go back to you and your family

by kakacik

5/20/2026 at 9:35:42 PM

In Berlin the situation is horrible. For the past few weeks the pollen mixed with rain water looks like a yellow chemical spill on the side of the roads. Also it gets worse depending on the wind as well because most of the pollen from nearby forests in Brandenburg ends up in Berlin as well.

I grew up in a tropical country and never ever had any allergies in my life but in Berlin if I step outside with taking anti-allergy pills, that would be the death of me

by sajithdilshan

5/20/2026 at 9:01:16 AM

Spruce is also a problem in Poland, especially southern. Leaf trees have been replaced with "fast growing" spruce over a hundred years ago.

by postepowanieadm

5/20/2026 at 12:47:09 PM

one one had Japan seem to have quite bad luck with the specific tree(s) mass planted

but also on the other hand in Germany problems with allergies are very common and a pretty big deal for many people, it's just that we got used to it

but also while Germany has not-very-diverse "tree farms" for a very long time, the level of monoculture got way worse in the last 70-100 years AFIK, especially after WW2 the only way to cope with the extreme high demand was to mostly plant very fast growing trees. I.e. mostly spruce and pine.

Idk. if allergies got worse due to this and we just didn't notice because of having so much bigger problems (like many cities lying in ashes) or if Germany always had similar bad allergy problems. But this WW2 induced increase in monoculture is still a huge problem even ignoring allergies as this made German forests especially susceptible to things like pests and adding stress from climate change has lead to mass dying of trees in some regions.

by dathinab

5/20/2026 at 8:48:20 AM

Germany has half the percentage of forest as Japan

by alphabeta3r56

5/20/2026 at 10:58:50 AM

On average sure, but there are regions in Germany with both high amount of forest areas and fairly high population density (e.g. Ore Mountain region up to 50% forest area and more than 200 people/km^2).

by flohofwoe

5/20/2026 at 10:51:21 AM

Context:

Germany, area 357,022 km2 (137,847 sq mi) water 1.27%

Japan, area 377,975 km2 (145,937 sq mi), water 1.4%

by thrownthatway

5/20/2026 at 5:39:10 PM

Some trees pollen causes allergies, other tree pollen does not. Peanuts frequently produce allergic reactions, macadamia nuts rarely do.

by indoordin0saur

5/20/2026 at 1:14:36 PM

In Germany I understand the non-native trees in the warmer climate are succumbing to beetles, and dying out.

I understand that they're being replanted by more native species.

by zeristor

5/20/2026 at 1:23:19 PM

Yes true, especially the Harz mountains currently look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland (also visible on Google Maps), it will take decades to regrow with more diverse and climate resistant tree types, but worth it (compared to reforesting with another layer of fast growing trees of the same type).

by flohofwoe

5/20/2026 at 10:30:54 AM

My aunt in Poland has terrible allergies now because of yellow pollen from spruce, but I'm not sure how that translates to larger population, other than it does happen

by soni96pl

5/20/2026 at 10:41:09 AM

Spruce allergy is a thing but it is rare. Only a few unlucky people suffer from it.

by jeltz

5/20/2026 at 2:06:24 PM

Pollen can be broadly separated into airborne and not-airborne.

Ragweed pollen is light enough to be borne miles by wind. Goldenrod pollen is too heavy for that, but is sticky, and is carried on fur and feathers. Ironically, people blame the showy goldenrod blooms for allergies, although they likely have never had goldenrod pollen in their breathing passages - while lowly, hiding ragweed unleashes millions of barbed pollens spores upon their breathing passages. (Ragweed flowers are small and green - you can stare at a plant and not realize it's blooming!)

Likewise: the sap of poison ivy is strongly allergenic; the sap of maple trees almost never, due to reactivity with immune systems. Americans are likely to be exposed to both.

So, in short: there are plants that are potential allergy-sources, and others that are not.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 9:48:04 AM

"why do you sneeze, we don't do that Germany"

by Xmd5a

5/20/2026 at 8:50:33 AM

Hayfever allergy rates are growing around the whole world, Germany included.

by iLoveOncall

5/20/2026 at 1:07:27 PM

>Every year, an area is selectively clear-cut, removing sugi, hinoki but also other invasive species like bamboo. Broadleaf trees are left, and with more sun coming through to the ground, they grow back, along with other new seedlings either planted by staff or brought by birds or animals.

In other parts of the world, some plantation -> forest projects don't remove trees but instead pull them over and leave them as logs with exposed roots. This provides new habitats for various plants and animals around the logs and the gap in the canopy. I'm curious if they've explored the impacts that approach would have.

by goda90

5/20/2026 at 1:30:25 PM

Japanese sugi forests are too dense. I don't think they have the space to lay these logs down.

by flakiness

5/20/2026 at 5:36:38 PM

Log slides are potentially lethal in steep areas too. Whole buildings can get demolished if the logs roll down the slope.

by mr_toad

5/20/2026 at 2:05:23 PM

A historically common way to clear certain kinds of areas in the US is to drag anchor chains with giant bulldozers. May still work?

by lazide

5/20/2026 at 2:32:45 PM

In this case they're trying to leave broadleaf trees alone, so probably not.

by rsynnott

5/20/2026 at 9:01:23 AM

Hmm, I'm also wondering about studies about overly sanitized environments for children being correlated with higher allergy rates.

I guess poking around for a good representative study, it's actually low diversity of microbial exposure, not "cleaning" per-se that is correlated - e.g this is one reason why households with dogs have lower allergy rates. A monoculture of certain tree species also implies less microbial diversity.

by dv_dt

5/20/2026 at 10:00:27 AM

I'd like to preemptively draw a line between two different kinds of hypothesis when it comes to hygiene:

1. The immune system is not being exposed enough to wild or even infectious content, and it needs more threats to fight off.

2. ("Old Friends") The immune system is not being exposed enough to commensal or even symbiotic organisms that we co-evolved with, throwing off its calibration and tuning.

I instinctively prefer the second, the first seems a little too simple, like some some scaled-down version of "tough love" and "spare the rod[-bacteria], spoil the child."

by Terr_

5/20/2026 at 11:48:26 AM

Regarding the second point: ...or parasitic.

There's a hypothesis that says the incidence of allergies correlates inversely with the incidence of certain common parasites, like the tapeworm or the pinworm. Additionally, nowadays pregnant women are advised to avoid getting infected with toxoplasmosis due to the birth defects it causes, but it wasn't until the 70s when the last route of transmission was found and explained.

What if the body is just looking for parasites where there are none?

EDIT: I also lean on the second, as the first doesn't explain why allergies can come and go seemingly without reason.

Personally currently I'm allergic to some unindentified plant and it's a different one than back when I was a child. Meanwhile my child is right now experiencing "my" childhood allergy season - with similar severity at that.

by Tade0

5/20/2026 at 5:28:42 PM

IgE antibodies, which play a huge role in allergic responses, are "supposed" to target parasites and other non-germ invaders. There are treatments that directly deactivate these antibodies... or you can give yourself a parasite on purpose to give those IgE antibodies something constructive to do: https://radiolab.org/podcast/91951-an-update-on-hookworms

by cryzinger

5/20/2026 at 2:53:21 PM

IIRC there has been scientists looking at what substances and pathways the parasites, particularly the helminths family, might affect because the parasites have a evolutionary "motivation" to suppress immune responses, at least to some degree in the host.

by dv_dt

5/20/2026 at 2:09:50 PM

What if the human body's response to external influences (including parasites) is nuanced and complex?

What if the very idea of "parasite" is overly redactive: maybe there are both advantages and disadvantages of having another organism in your internal biome, in varying amounts?

by IAmBroom

5/21/2026 at 3:02:35 AM

Very Holobiont of you.

by timschmidt

5/20/2026 at 11:13:26 AM

An excellent distinction to make. Life however often says "Why not both? And 11 more you'd have never thought of. And one that seems impossible just for fun."

If it's possible, and it can force a function up a gradient, life is almost certainly doing it somewhere.

by timschmidt

5/20/2026 at 1:14:11 PM

You might even say it finds a way.

by zahlman

5/21/2026 at 1:20:22 PM

I grew up on a farm and was constantly exposed to all kinds of soil, vegetables, animals, trees, well forests, grasses and hay.. and I never had any kind of allergies. However, when I moved to another European country I had severe reactions to the local mosquitoes. Not that it was itching very much or anything, just that it was bleeding like crazy. I would wake up in the morning and look like I had been through an especially messy vampire attack during the night. Bloody forearms, ankles.. It took a year, and then I got used to it and stopped having any reaction whatsoever (same as in my home country). No bumps, no itching.

Then Japan.. and the same happened, with the local mosquitoes. Bleeding like hell. It took slightly longer, but I did get used to that as well, so now there are no problems.

And.. I got itchy eyes when I travelled to Japan. As I said, I've never been allergic to anything. I didn't have sneezes or the like, but it was problematic. I tried to wash my eyes with salty water every day, and I got eye drops.. this went on for several years while I kept visiting Japan (I always stayed for long periods). Last year I finally concluded that it was actually the Sakura trees.. (The Cherry Blossoms) which caused it. And this year the symptoms are close to non-existing, so I'm concluding that I'm getting used to that as well (and I have visited Sugi forests many times over the years too, and no problems there). Hopefully.

by Tor3

5/20/2026 at 12:51:47 PM

I wonder why we focus so much on this claim, when there are many studies giving other plausible explanations.

> Living less than 75 m from the main road was significantly associated with lifetime allergic rhinitis (AR), past-year AR symptoms, diagnosed AR, and treated AR. The distance to the main road (P for trend=0.001), the length of the main road (P for trend=0.041), and the proportion of the main road area (P for trend=0.006) had an exposure-response relationship with allergic sensitization. A strong inverse association was observed between residential proximity to the main load and lung function, especially FEV1, FEV1/FVC, and FEF25-75.

Effect of Traffic-Related Air Pollution on Allergic Disease: Results of the Children's Health and Environmental Research - PMC - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4446634/

> The most serious issue might be the growing trend in sensitization to pollen, especially in urban settings (7, 8); in fact, people living near heavy traffic are affected with pollen-induced respiratory allergies more than those in rural districts (9). The sudden rise in environmental pollutant levels due to industrial development and urban motor vehicle traffic has affected air quality and consequently, the severity and mortality from allergic diseases (10). Some evidence suggests that air pollution might cause new cases of asthma as well (9, 11).

Interaction Between Air Pollutants and Pollen Grains: The Role on the Rising Trend in Allergy - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5941124/

This doesn't mean that exposure to biodiversity doesn't play a role, but when it comes to explaining the differences between rural and urban settings, this explanation seems more plausible to me than the hand-wavey claims about people supposedly cleaning their apartments more in cities.

Personally, I have seasonal asthma associated with pollen, since childhood, and I'm from a big city.

I have a much harder time walking next to a busy road in allergy season than being somewhere more rural, even when there are birch trees right in the vicinity of where I am, one of my allergenes.

It's not b/w of course though, the pollen can trigger it not only in the city. But then it's usually very mild.

My asthma is seasonal, allergy-associated, and still, the worst stressor I experience is pollution and car exhaust. Well, the worst unavoidable stressor.

Alcohol also seems to do bad things to my allergy response.

by moritzwarhier

5/20/2026 at 1:03:42 PM

I think you're correct.

I live off on a city side street off of a major avenue in my city. Diesel soot looks (other than color) and behaves like pollen. Next week i'll be cleaning the pollen and soot particles from my porch. I personally don't suffer from allergies too bad (just headaches during peak pollen release), but my wife really does.

When I grew up in NYC, i was too young to remember allergies, but I can recall cubbies for inhalers as many of my classmates had asthma. We happened to be downwind from the Exxon refinery and Greenpoint garbage incinerator.

by Spooky23

5/21/2026 at 8:31:13 AM

Seems like just the thing for a careful public health study to figure out a scientifically backed policy. Pollution might be a singular driving factor, or significant combined factor driving allergies. The link from pollution to asthma and lung cancer is already pretty clear and driving vehicle pollution down in neighborhoods is already a public health win independent of allergy rates anyway I think.

by dv_dt

5/20/2026 at 9:18:38 AM

It can go the other direction, too: exposure to moldy home environments gave me (now resolved) food sensitivities, dust allergies, pet-associated allergies, etc.

You can definitely undertrain, or overwhelm, the immune system if not cautious!

by DANmode

5/20/2026 at 12:42:07 PM

Don't underestimate the amount of cockroach debris present in a modern home. There's a positive correlation between asthma and in-home roach population.

by Tangurena2

5/20/2026 at 1:31:52 PM

Maybe some plywood cheap old US homes full of holes or crevices, but here in Europe if you have cockroach infection and not blind or similarly disabled, you know it. They are not exactly hiding in the evening/night.

by kakacik

5/20/2026 at 1:48:29 PM

I was surprised to not find anything about possible cures or treatments in the article.

I had bad allergies myself in my teenage years - unable to sleep for weeks - I finally sought help. The western medicine offers protein shots (similar treatment as to food allergies) but I heard good things about acupuncture. First, I was very skeptical about how needles could "help" with allergies. But about 2 months into the treatment (two sessions per week) the pollen season started. The air felt "heavy to breathe" but to my surprise I was not effected that year at all. After finishing the whole treatment I was allergy free for many years. Now I sometimes feel it on bad days with clouds of pollen hanging in humid air. My uneducated guess is, that my acupuncture treatment I received over 2 decades ago "wears off".

I wonder if others experienced similar or if I was a statistical outlier to a well shaped Gauss curve?

by saltybytes

5/20/2026 at 5:07:13 PM

> Medicine is another prong to the attack, with the development of new treatments to better ease the symptoms of pollen exposure. One Japanese trial, for example, showed a long-acting under-the-tongue immunotherapy tablet was were still helping alleviate symptoms two years after treatment. Other scientists have even been experimenting with genetically modified rice designed to alleviate allergy symptoms.

There is. Sorta

by ilivethere

5/20/2026 at 2:54:19 PM

My understanding is allergies can be partially managed with placebo affect (as can mild colds!) and that is likely the reason it appears to work.

by packetlost

5/20/2026 at 3:59:32 PM

I also understand that weight lifting can help reduce allergies, since the immune system is kind of a "luxury" system that cedes resources when the body is recovering from injury, and weightlifting is deliberate minor injury.

Maybe acupuncture could work through the same mechanism?

by BobaFloutist

5/20/2026 at 4:01:07 PM

Maybe during treatment, but that mechanism wouldn't work months after stopping the treatment.

by packetlost

5/20/2026 at 2:59:21 PM

I live in Japan and developed an allergy to cedar pollen after I came. I started sublingual immunotherapy (a pill of concentrated pollen you dissolve under your tongue) three years ago and now can make it through the pollen season symptom-free. Supposedly you even keep the immunity after stopping the medication, though I have not tested that yet.

by amake

5/21/2026 at 9:14:51 AM

I did sublingual immunotherapy for gramineae and while the immunity does wane with years and in particularly bad years (like this one) you'll get symptoms it's still waaaaay better than before

by agos

5/20/2026 at 5:58:41 PM

The article specifically mentions medical treatments.

by indoordin0saur

5/20/2026 at 1:10:49 PM

I was surprised to read that our allergies evolve, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. When I lived in the midwest of the USA, I hated mowing the lawn so much. I became a gunked-up mess with my sinuses packed with snot, regardless of antihistamines and (new at the time) allergy meds that presaged our present treatments.

I'd lived in the Bay Area for one or two months before a neighbor in my apartment complex knocked to ask if it was standard to not have an air conditioner in the residence (something that had surprised me as well). She said that keeping the windows open was aggravating her allergies and it was the first moment that I realized I could breathe easily through my nose. I don't know what grows where I grew up that isn't here, but getting away from it really changed my quality of life.

Severe allergies can be so intrusive that I'd consider moving out of the country if I was in the situation described in this article. But I only think that because I've experienced the effect of changing regions and experiencing a radically different outcome. If someone grew up with this being normal, they might never consider getting away. I certainly didn't think it could be better or worse if I lived someplace else.

by alsetmusic

5/20/2026 at 1:59:00 PM

"Evolve" doesn't well describe the very real possibility that you were/are more reactive to species popular in the Midwest, but not the Bay Area.

By "evolve", I thought you mean "change within the individual over their lifetime" - which also happens. I spent time in oxygen tents as a young child; I mostly suffer from (easily treated) sinus issues as an adult.

Also, our drugs have improved mightily, but that's obviously not relevant for an increase in allergies amongst the population (separate from the above meaning of "evolve").

Edit: I guess I'm not sure what you meant by the word.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 10:48:02 AM

“Arboreal sexism” is a similar phenomenon:

We prefer male trees in cities since they do not produce fruit that drop on the streets. The result is a much higher pollen load.

by niemandhier

5/20/2026 at 10:53:44 AM

That's not actually a thing. Very few trees we plant have specific male vs female plants. One of the few that does that gets brought up in this context, ginko, tends to have male trees preferred because the fruit kind of reeks. Ginkgo fruit is also toxic so you really don't want masses of it getting washed into local waterways in ecosystems the tree isn't native to - not a great time for the local wildlife. A significant supermajority of all the rest of the trees that you plant in cities are gonna have male and female flowers on the same plant or male and female structures within the same flower.

by vikramkr

5/20/2026 at 12:41:43 PM

Cool, I did not know that this is so disputed a quasi factoid. Thanks for cleaning my brain!

Germany has “Baumkataster” which are databases for public trees in cities, they save all kind of tree metadata but gender is missing …

https://hub.arcgis.com/search?tags=baumkataster

by niemandhier

5/20/2026 at 1:17:32 PM

I do think you mean sex, not gender - trees don't really have a gender or gender expression. Either way, it would be rather irrelevant, as most trees planted in cities have both male and female flowers (oak, birch, most conifers), or even hermaphroditic flowers (citrus).

by simiones

5/20/2026 at 5:25:12 PM

Great, now I have to hate trees for being gender-fluid, too?

I just spent $500 on gay conversion therapy for my dog! /s

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 6:50:37 PM

It's not really disputed. It's something that happened in one small place or two that people insist on repeating on the internet as if it's some universal thing.

by marcosdumay

5/20/2026 at 12:34:51 PM

thanks for this clarification. until today i was under the impression that they planted male trees only because they looked prettier and weren't as messy as the female ones (to reduce the cleaning bill of the local municipal)

by dwa3592

5/20/2026 at 3:22:54 PM

TIL. Trees have (biological) sex. This just blew my head. I must have been too sleepy when we saw that in high school.

by MyHonestOpinon

5/20/2026 at 4:07:45 PM

It's more complicated in plants than in at least mammals. Some do, some don't, and some do and don't.

by BobaFloutist

5/20/2026 at 10:24:25 PM

One species of fungus (split-gill mushroom, Schizophyllum commune) has over 20,000 distinct sexes. Its spores can fertilize any of the other sexes - guaranteeing, basically, that it CAN mate with any spore NOT from its own parent.

Some plants do this by activating the male and female parts of their flowers at different times, but this strategy is way stronger.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 6:19:20 PM

Almost every living thing except for bacteria (and viruses, which aren’t really alive) can reproduce sexually.

by mr_toad

5/20/2026 at 3:42:58 PM

[dead]

by thadk

5/20/2026 at 7:28:36 AM

Interesting. I noticed that many people have hay fever in Japan, but I always just assumed it was genetic or something. I wonder if living there for a long time will make you more sensitive to pollen

by hastily3114

5/20/2026 at 8:02:26 AM

As someone who has suffered from hay fever for my entire life, and also lived in many different locations, almost every move came with a 2-3 year reprieve from my symptoms while my body "discovered" the fun new local allergens.

by timr

5/20/2026 at 2:11:28 PM

Same.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 9:51:38 AM

It’s known that repeated exposure to allergens can cause allergic symptoms in people previously without them. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_fancier%27s_lung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer%27s_lung

I actually seemed to grow out of hay fever when I was in my early 20s. Perhaps coincidentally this is also around the time I developed an allergy to cannabis from overuse. Wonder if they’re related somehow.

by mathieuh

5/20/2026 at 4:02:47 PM

it's a bit of a balance. based on this advice, there was a long time recommendation to avoid giving young children peanuts. however, this advice was rescinded after it turned out to increase peanut allergies.

by bobthepanda

5/20/2026 at 2:13:24 PM

Poison ivy/oak sensitivity varies with lifetime exposure. On rare occasions, it is inverse: careful exposure can sometimes lead to resistance. More commonly: you get more sensitive over your lifetime, and some "once immune" people end up catastrophically changing due to incautious exposure.

It's complicated.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 11:08:31 AM

Yes. I developed hay fever after living here in Japan for a couple years. Was fine the first few years, though it was amusing to watch "yellow clouds of pollen" being blown from the trees with random gusts of wind. Now it's not so amusing. My car windows are dusted with a new layer of "light yellow" every couple days now (in season).

by jdshaffer

5/20/2026 at 11:44:24 AM

It's super easy to be allergic to cedar pollen because it is such a fine pollen. I developed a cedar pollen allergy within a couple years of moving from somewhere with no cedar to a heavily forested area with cedar. No other allergies to anything, I don't think I'm particularly prone. I tried doing the allergy shots for it for a while but it didn't seem to do much. What works is staying inside with the house sealed up and air filters running, or just getting the hell out of town for a month+.

by zeafoamrun

5/20/2026 at 12:14:52 PM

Airconditioning 24/7 everywhere makes people weak is my theory.

by expedition32

5/20/2026 at 12:37:51 PM

AC are the bane for allergic people. It dries the air and flares the nostrils

by ielillo

5/20/2026 at 7:40:48 AM

Lots of people I know who moved here as adults have developed pollen allergies over the years. Some after a 2 or 3 years, some after 10.

by mc3301

5/20/2026 at 8:44:20 AM

I got hayfever on my 3rd year of living here, and it seems like quite a common pattern among immigrants I've noticed. I have hayfever back in the UK too, but I guess I didn't have a Cedar allergy - so it took time to develop.

by tidenly

5/20/2026 at 3:54:32 PM

Sample size of 1, for a couple years in Japan had no issue but then hit like a truck.

I have allergies to ragweed and didn't have spring allergies before that. Now back in the US and have spring allergies as well.

by themaninthedark

5/20/2026 at 7:46:14 AM

I'd been wondering why my allergies go nuts every time I visit Japan, but never really suffered in other Asian countries. Cool to know now.

Upside is I discovered the trick of just taking fexofenadine every single day which had the side effect of solving my chronic sinus infections.

by komali2

5/20/2026 at 8:51:09 AM

My quality of life is notably better from daily fexofenadine vs what I think was low-level allergies that I developed in my 20s to pets, dust, etc

by petesergeant

5/20/2026 at 11:24:36 AM

I have been living in Japan for almost 8 years now, and I didn't have any allergy ever until a month ago when all of sudden it hit me like a hammer. Good god was it painful...

by pezezin

5/20/2026 at 9:04:59 AM

I would assume it has more to do with less exposition to hay/pollen in urban areas, for instance in years in Beijing I've had hardly allergies since it is not exactly green, though I went to parks, but here in Prague right now with everything blooming it's nuts.

Actually now that I think about it never head really problems with allergies even in Southeast Asia, though I was in very green areas, maybe humidity helps as well?

by Markoff

5/20/2026 at 10:43:51 AM

I think the humidity has to play a role in that. Very dry air is not good for the nose even without allergies. This year the spring is very dry and also quite cold in Central Europe which makes things worse.

by tpm

5/21/2026 at 1:31:51 PM

In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid. Today, for example, it's over 70% relative (when the sky was still clear and mostly blue, now it's raining so it's much worse). And, as said in that article, there's a lot of allergy in Japan. My wife (native) has a little bit of it, and I myself also reacted for a while, but given time it seems to have left me (as I mentioned elsewhere I grew up on a farm with exposure to everything and I never had an allergy before).

There's one guy I know who lives more or less in the middle of a forest with both Sugi and Hinoki, and he's suffering a lot. But he still likes it much better there than in the huge city where he grew up. I noticed that among the locals in that place (just a bunch of houses, not even a village) I didn't see anyone else with that kind of allergy.

by Tor3

5/21/2026 at 1:58:41 PM

> In Japan, however, it's almost always very humid.

Yeah I realised that's a little bit of an issue in my theory. Of course if it's very humid I would also expect that most buildings have aircon that's keeping the humidity down and can contribute to the allergies.

by tpm

5/20/2026 at 8:14:57 AM

[flagged]

by plutokras

5/20/2026 at 8:25:24 PM

Mismanaged monoculture forests are one of the first examples of states seeking simplified legible solutions to managing complex ecosystems in Seeing Like a State.

by ianferrel

5/20/2026 at 8:10:15 PM

I lived in Japan from 2011-2016 and eventually needed to move away because my allergies were so bad. Many other foreigners would say things like "I never had allergies before I came to Japan".

Unfortunately, I heard that the government previously investigated taking action but were lobbied against doing so by pharmaceutical companies that earn revenue from allergy medications.

by cloche

5/20/2026 at 7:41:40 AM

Japan being 68% forest is an astounding stat.

by pjc50

5/20/2026 at 9:59:03 AM

Maine is 89.46% [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover_by_state_and_terr...

by PyWoody

5/20/2026 at 1:30:21 PM

Sorry, I can't edit it now but I just meant it as a neat fact and not a comparison.

by PyWoody

5/20/2026 at 11:10:08 AM

Yeah but Maine is not really known for miles of urban sprawl

by saagarjha

5/20/2026 at 1:03:17 PM

Maine has less than a tenth of Japan's population density.

by Tade0

5/20/2026 at 7:44:27 AM

75% of it is mountains, and not exactly inhabited.

by vkou

5/20/2026 at 9:07:59 AM

The nation has also had declining population (hence deflationary housing) for years

by Schlagbohrer

5/20/2026 at 9:10:21 AM

Still behind Finland (73.7%) and Sweden (68.7%) though and Laos (71.6%) as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_ar...

by Markoff

5/20/2026 at 10:43:10 AM

I don’t consider that a good Wikipedia article because it does a bad job distinguishing between natural forests and mono-/bicultural plantations of which there are vast areas of here. It’s quite like calling wheat fields ”grasslands”. Both fundamentally lack biodiversity.

by Y-bar

5/20/2026 at 9:52:39 AM

Not really for a mountain island. Being near the coast means increased moisture and wind, which hits mountains to make rain. Take a japanese-sized slice off the coast of most countries and you will find lots of forrest. Think the pacific northwest, or the bits of hawaii not covered in lava. Then compare parts of the australian coast with no mountains.

by sandworm101

5/20/2026 at 10:37:41 AM

Would not count it as forest, but plantation, if it is heavily managed.

by sl-1

5/20/2026 at 12:49:41 PM

Allergies are weird. I definitely became more sensitive to hay fever after a gastric bypass.

I have a friend who for no apparent reason developed strong allergies in their sixties. Particularly to goats milk.

So much so that they will not go to a restaurant that has goat milk products (e.g.: halloumi cheese) in their kitchen due to one too many visits to the hospital emergency ward.

by anotherevan

5/21/2026 at 1:10:02 PM

My father also developed allergies in his sixties. And it got worse and worse. Soon he was becoming lactose intolerant as well, and had to start with gluten-free food. He could never be near oranges, unless they were grown without pesticides - the remains on the outside was enough to trigger a reaction. Then he couldn't eat farmed salmon, though he could still eat wild salmon. But there was more and more wild fish he couldn't eat either, which did hurt a fish lover like him. And on and on it went, until he was severely limited to what he could eat and what he could get exposed to.

Then one day he noticed that the mayonnaise he enjoyed every day contained a conservation additive (an E-type, as is how they're labelled in Europe) which he knew he used to have some reaction to in the past, another food product included it and he had avoided that one since like forever. So he quit the mayonnaise when he noticed that. But what happened next was astonishing - all his allergies, lactose intolerance and everything disappeared, and not much later he didn't have any issues with anything.

by Tor3

5/20/2026 at 8:46:22 AM

I first read about this in The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence by Gavin McCormick. Really good read.

by closetkantian

5/20/2026 at 10:23:37 AM

wow 170 euros on amazon.de :/

by cyberpunk

5/20/2026 at 10:50:57 AM

So, is it 170€ good?

by imp0cat

5/20/2026 at 12:33:39 PM

While in Japan, I heard an urban legend that, it typically takes 5 accumulated years for a foreigner to acquire hay fever in Japan.

by crvdgc

5/20/2026 at 1:08:36 PM

That more or less checks out, in my case. I think it started in like 4-5 years for me and it's absolutely terrible in Tokyo in the spring time. Thankfully I moved to Okinawa where they didn't plant those trees, or if they did there are much less of them.

by bschwindHN

5/20/2026 at 10:03:09 AM

Doesn't pollen also have to do with the "gender" of the trees? In gendered trees, male trees emit pollen and female trees intercept pollen. Not all species of trees are gendered (dioecious) but various are. If reforestation uses male trees at the expense of female, then pollen count will be higher.

Urban developers who make the mistake of using male trees, because they don't drop fruit/berries/seed pods, will make the residents suffer pollen. Sugi and hinoki apparently are not gendered -- they're monoecious.

by OutOfHere

5/20/2026 at 12:48:52 PM

Most trees (about 75%) contain both male & female flowers. Of the rest, about half are species with separate male/female trees and about half have separate male/female flowers (on the same tree).

by Tangurena2

5/20/2026 at 9:35:52 AM

estimated 43% of the population --wow

by rimworld

5/20/2026 at 12:40:40 PM

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.

by NoImmatureAdHom

5/20/2026 at 1:10:37 PM

>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.

by pixl97

5/20/2026 at 5:03:25 PM

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.

by saalweachter

5/20/2026 at 7:46:09 AM

Only two types of tree? Even in the 1970's surely that should have been cause for concern.

by lloydatkinson

5/20/2026 at 7:59:12 AM

This might have something to do with it:

> When the sugi and hinoki forests were first planted in the 1950s and 60s, they weren't meant to stand forever. At the time, it was assumed they would be gradually cut down and replanted over time, as had been the case before the war. But as Japan's economy boomed in the late 60s and 70s, major cities like Kobe and Tokyo grew rapidly, and it ended up being cheaper to import wood from other countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

by Mashimo

5/20/2026 at 8:45:38 AM

I don't get the relevance of "major cities grew rapidly". That can only mean that demand for wood spiked. There's no way it can cause local wood to become less competitive with imported wood.

by thaumasiotes

5/20/2026 at 9:39:34 AM

It sounds contradictory but it often does. When a part of the economy booms, it may make other parts of the economy less able to keep up because they cannot increase profitability at the same pace (so people will seek jobs with larger salaries, or investments will go different ways). Moreover, increase of demand can drive seeking cheaper sources of a product, which then overtakes the previous ones due to being cheaper (while before this increase due to regulations or lack of certain network/supply chain it may not have been possible or profitable enough to seek these sources).

by freehorse

5/20/2026 at 9:03:21 AM

It does: Cheap rural workers could get better paying jobs in the cities so wages increased in rural areas to

by niemandhier

5/20/2026 at 9:14:20 AM

> There's no way it can cause local wood to become less competitive with imported wood.

But isn't that what we're seeing around the world? Be it cheaper labor, political control or whatever else, imported goods can be cheaper than locally produced goods.

by martin_a

5/20/2026 at 9:58:39 PM

Sure, imported goods can be cheaper than locally produced goods. But the locally produced goods don't suffer from the fact that their market is expanding!

by thaumasiotes

5/20/2026 at 10:56:03 AM

If I had to guess - lumber costs might be dominated by labor costs? If they don't have guest worker programs it might not be cost effective anymore as wages go up

by vikramkr

5/20/2026 at 6:52:27 PM

When you price in externalities (landslides, replanting, etc.), and others don't is easily turns the scale. Especially if others are selling illegally cut down trees... (Not alleging anybody in this specific case, but have some examples from my closer neighborhood)

by fodkodrasz

5/20/2026 at 9:05:56 AM

It required imported wood come what may, which opened up regulations and economies of scale that would have made importing wood expensive.

by ZiiS

5/20/2026 at 6:33:45 PM

I really wish the planning of trees and bushes took into account allergies.

In my area, there are a lot of trees that make my life hellish when those plants pollinate. The other day I thought I was coming down with a cold. Nope, just really bad allergies.

by e40

5/20/2026 at 9:46:58 PM

And oddly, Germany has the same pollen clouds, France has the same pollen clouds, the West Coast has them. (The three places I saw this year, at least).

It's odd the BBC chose to anchor on Japan when it's really a widespread issue.

by groby_b

5/20/2026 at 3:42:03 PM

The silver lining: hinoki wood has a pleasant scent and makes high quality timber. The cost is lower now with the excess coming to market. Oddly, Wikipedia calls it “slow growing”, contradicting the claim in the story it being planted to help rapidly reforest Japan.

by cratermoon

5/20/2026 at 12:01:06 PM

I think its the same in Germany no? Heuschnupfen is something that got worse over the time and if i remember correct is as well related with some reforest project..

by pelasaco

5/20/2026 at 12:29:49 PM

What about nuclear bombs? No effects from nuking cities?

by newsclues

5/20/2026 at 5:27:52 PM

Pretty sure that effect has been well studied.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 10:51:34 AM

[flagged]

by armada1122

5/20/2026 at 7:27:15 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

5/20/2026 at 8:56:02 AM

[flagged]

by youre-wrong3

5/20/2026 at 8:59:31 AM

I’ll bite: which ideology are you claiming believers in climate change are motivated by?

by jplrssn

5/20/2026 at 9:48:02 AM

This article could have been summarized in three paragraphs.

I'm really hating this trend of diluting content by giving useless testimonials, random anecdotes and delaying the resolution of the subject as much as possible.

by xchip

5/20/2026 at 10:39:34 AM

People like reading.

You could summarise all of Ender's Game in a couple of sentences but, guess what, that wouldn't be particularly pleasurable.

Not everything has to by hyper-efficient. More importantly, not everything has to be tailored specifically for you. It's OK that other people like reading long-form content.

by edent

5/20/2026 at 10:24:43 PM

You're REALLY going to hate this one weird trick Jesus did with all of the Old Testament, then. (and preemptively, with the New Testament, too!)

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 3:52:52 PM

Here, have a summary of In Search of Lost Time, courtesy of Wikipedia: The novel recounts the experiences of the Narrator (who is never definitively named) while he is growing up, learning about art, participating in society, and falling in love.

Hope you enjoyed it, no need to thank me.

by cratermoon

5/20/2026 at 2:50:37 PM

It wasn't smoke – it was AISLOP

by nekusar