I can find all kinds of lists of “worst” allergy cities. Can anyone find a list of “best” allergy cities?
The best cities for allergy sufferers are: Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI (2); Seattle, WA (3); San Francisco, CA (4); Minneapolis, MN (5); Chicago, IL (6); Syracuse, NY (7); Salt Lake City, UT (8); Los Angeles, CA (9); and Denver, CO (10).
see:
Schering-Plough News Release, about Clarinex
http://www.sch-plough.com/schering_plough/news/release.jsp?releaseID=516761
I’ve got pretty bad allergies to the usual things; pollen, blowing dist, dust mites, and so on.
I needed very little medication when I was in Colorado, or southern or central New Mexico.
Kansas City and Central Florida were probably the worst allergy areas I’ve experienced.
I live near Tampa right now. I can agree with this list, Tampa is awful for allergies.
http://allergies.about.com/cs/research/l/blglaxosk032902.htm
I take issue with that. My wife and I used to live in Salt Lake City where we had moderate allergy problems, since moving to seattle Springtime has inspired hatred in both of us… week long bouts of stuffed noses, mountains of tissues and red eyes.
In fact during the spring, on most of the allergen indicators you can get via email, we’re topped out on the scale.
What people need to factor in is the types of allergies.
Desert climates are the best for people with tree, pollen, and grass allergies. New Mexico, Arizona, etc.
If you have specific tree alergies, look for places where those trees are not indigenous.
I believe your allergies can come and go. What you are allergic to this year, you may not be allergic to next year. I’m not sure that applies to all allergies, I think it’s mainly with air-born pollens and spores
If I do regular antihistamines, they make me feel worse than the allergy. I feel grumpy and tired and I generally hate the world. If I do these new-and-improved non-drowsy pills, they only make me mildly psychotic. I have started taking just 1/2 of a pill, that seems to work a bit better for me, it’s not quite as debilitating.
Ah…anecdotal evidence abounds.
Well that was kind of a snarky response there cochise.
I am just saying that as an alergy sufferer in one of the cities you mark as the lowest (Seattle), and having lived in a city that’s not even on your list of the lowest (Salt Lake City), 2 people in my personal knowledge have had worse allergic reactions in the better rated city by your source.
Also as mentioned, the daily alergy alerts we recieve for Seattle (from www.Pollen.com before some snarky person pops in with a “Cite?”) have the pollen counts in the spring well above a rating of 10 (on a scale of 1-12) for prolonged periods of time. Unfortunately I didn’t save each individual email and pollen.com doesn’t offer a tracking feature for past trends (that I can find).
In addition (just so I can show that Seattle is in fact not one of the best cities and prove i’m not just pulling things out of my… hat. Here are some additional statistics (from GlaxoSmithKline):
Worst Cities for Springtime Allergies 2001: Seattle #19
Worst Cities for Springtime Allergies 2002:
Seattle #15
True in 2004 Seattle did have better numbers due to much dryier yearsin 2003 and 2004.
The biggest factor for anyone is to just find out what it is you’re allergic to and then move to where that isn’t.
That’s better.
In recent years I read that Portland, Maine has very clean air.