Daily Hay Fever Forecast in The Netherlands

Abstract

The literature on local pollen counts and their significance for hay fever is reviewed and a system for forecasting hay fever is described. Such forecasts have been broadcast by radio in The Netherlands since 1977. The hay fever forecast takes the form of a prognosis (in terms of three grades) of the influence of the expected whether situation on tomorrow's course of the subjective complaints of hay fever sufferers. It is not a forecast of the pollen count. When the subjective complaints of about 150 hay fever patients were used as reference for evaluation, the forecasts proved to have been correct in 72, 85, and 88% of the cases in 1977, 1978, and 1979, respectively. The practical usefulness and the limitations of the system are briefly discussed, with emphasis on the principle that not the local pollen count but the weather should be taken as the main determinative factor for the expected subjective experiences in a group of hay fever sufferers in a certain region.

The main pollen season ofParietariain Genoa (Italy): forecast possibilities

“…Various authors have discussed the problem of drawing up forecast models for certain taxa (Ambrosia, Gramineae, Berulo, Oleo ete) on the basis of their airborne pollen concentrations and related weather conditions (e.g., Rayn o r 6r Hayes 1970;Ilavies & Smith 1973;Spieksma 1980Spieksma , 1988Bringfelt et al 1982;Buch 1986;Frenguelli et al 1988Frenguelli et al , 1989.…”

An evaluation of some models to predict airborne pollen concentration from meteorological conditions in stockholm, sweden

“…Correlation studies of pollen concentrations and weather data were earlier published by Bringfelt (1979). Spieksma (1980) correlated hay fever complaints with weather parameters for forecasting purposes. This study presents some models for prediction of the start and intensity of the pollen season.…”

Grass Aeropollen of the Western United States Gulf Coast

“…For grass pollen, Frankland and Davies [17] suggested a frequency of 50/m3 to elicit allergic symp toms among all sensitized patients in the London area, while in Paris spring allergenicity increased markedly even though grass pollen peaked lower than 20/m3 [18]. Clearly, there is only a rough and general relationship between pollen counts and allergic complaints [19], a relationship which may differ during the early part of the pollen sea son. in peak periods, and at the end of the season [20], de pending on atmospheric pollutants to which pollen may be exposed before inhalation [21], and to other variables [22].…”

“…The smaller spring peak from early May (week 19) to mid-June (week 24) reached 53.9 pollen/m3 7-20 May (weeks [19][20] with the highest recovery of 137.1/m3 on 21 May. In the fall of 1987 the larger pollen peak occurred 8-21 October (weeks 41-42) at 96.9/m3, the maximum single day being on 15 October when 239.2/m3 were sampled.…”

“…It was shed dur ing two distinct peak periods, the smaller in the spring for 4 weeks from 6 May to 2 June (weeks [19][20][21][22] reaching an average of 27.3/m3, and the larger for 6 weeks from 9 Sep tember to 20 October (weeks 37-42) which reached during 23 September to 6 October (weeks 39-40) a 2-week aver age of 41.0/m3 ( fig. 1).…”