Allen Barsano founded Allergy Be Gone to help fellow allergy sufferers enjoy the outdoors by providing them with the allergy control products to protect them. While allergy products are incredibly helpful in fight aggravates, allergies will continue to plague the population until the root causes are sniffed out.
Allergies are on the rise. Allergy UK, a website "leading the fight against allergy," states, "the latest surveys show that the rates of allergy are increasing throughout the world, affecting up to 30-35 percent of people at some stage in their lives." What is most interesting, according to the same source, is that these numbers are highest in the UK, Europe and the U.S. The three most developed regions in the world suffer from this ailment which, as Paris Review correspondent Sadie Stein calls, "the chronic sense of being unwell without ever really seeming sick." Not only are the most developed regions in the world among the highest in allergy sufferers, but those nations and regions in which development is occurring have rising numbers as well.
Among the many hypotheses for the rise in allergies, many have begun to question the consequences of industrialization. Recently, author Gregg Mitman argues allergies to be a "modern malady" in which "pollution and urban planning are inextricably linked." Dr. Torkildsen and Paul Gomes, M.S. write in Ophthalmology Management, "pollen is much more likely to interact with air pollution…Pollutants damage the cell walls of pollen grains by accumulating on them, causing the release of the grain's proteinaceous contents, exposing more allergenic material."
Pollution and CO2 emissions also, according to an allergy and industrialization article published in New Scientist Magazine in London, instigate the production of pollen from male plants prematurely, releasing them into the air far sooner than normally anticipated. This coupled with the over-planting of male plants during the "litter-free" campaigns in the late 80s and 90s has created a robust environment for pollen production ailing hundreds of thousands.
