Pollen over Dublin City: Urban Exposure
Summary: Ireland has one of the highest incidents rates of asthma in the world with 80% of Irish asthmatics also possessing pollen allergies. Therefore, airborne pollen represents and immediate respiratory risk to the Irish public, especially for those in urban areas. The Irish monitoring network has only very recently commenced tracking the airborne pollen. Previously only broad inaccurate forecasts made in the UK were available. This entry represents the hard work that has gone into establishing a pollen monitoring network. The image was taken atop the Met Éireann facility, showing a pollen catkin against the city back-drop, with O’Connell tower seen piercing the sky. The image was taken on the day the first pollen sampler was installed there. Since then, we have continued to monitor pollen in Dublin and at several other sites with the hopes of continuing and improving the network and sharing results with those that need it.
A reliable pollen forecast and monitoring system is a valuable tool to help allergy sufferers avoid unnecessary exposure to allergenic pollen and to optimise drug treatments by allergists. Ireland does not have a monitoring system in place and the forecast currently used is provided by the University of Worcester (UK). This project addressed this by undertaking the required monitoring and developing a forecast model.
Visit the project website for more information.
The project team would like to acknowledge and thank the EPA and IRC for funding the project/researchers as well as Met Éireann for allowing us to use their site for the photography session.
https://www.epa.ie/media/epa-2020/research/communications/Image-for-the-website.jpg
