Conclusions

Final Conclusions

Pollen allergies in Romania are rising rapidly and causing problems for many people, especially those living in urban areas. This rise is largely caused by an increase in pollen, which is affected by climate change, air pollution, and lifestyle choices of the public. There have been many studies on this issue done in other countries, as well as efforts to learn more about pollen allergies and coping methods for the public. However, this research is still premature and sporadic in Romania, which highlights the importance of our project and Dr. Leru’s work to study this phenomenon in Bucharest.

Throughout this project, we identified factors that correlate to pollen counts and streamlined this process for Dr. Leru and her team. From our results, we concluded that pollen levels are highest on warm dry days for all types of pollen. This information can be used to make daily predictions of symptom severity. We also concluded that increased ragweed pollen levels have sparked an increase in public interest in learning more about allergies. We identified the strongest correlating factors to Ambrosia pollen as humidity and precipitation, which decreased the pollen levels, and CO levels, which had a positive correlation especially at the yearly level. We conclude that ozone is the largest contributing chemical pollutant to pollen allergies, as it was found to increase both grass pollen counts and allergy symptoms. Our findings were consistent with other studies around the world, particularly regarding grass pollen and climate in Poland and Northern Italy and pollutants worsening symptoms in the US. Even though our analysis only yielded a handful of strong correlations, we could see more trends for other factors with further data collection in the future.

Unfortunately, we were unable to make our own conclusions regarding the effect of temperature on pollen counts, but were able to use background knowledge to make some tentative predictions. We identified a significant increase in the temperature of Bucharest over the past 30 years, which we predict will continue. We also predict that humidity will decrease over time. Based on these prospections, we think that ragweed pollen levels and seasonal allergies will continue to increase over the years. Regarding pollution, we hope the recent increased awareness of the exceedingly high PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ levels in Bucharest along with more regulations to limit air pollutants will help reduce the levels of air particles that can worsen the symptoms of pollen allergy sufferers.

Our survey revealed interesting discoveries about the lifestyle of Romanian people, and posed potential research topics to be further explored. We found most allergy sufferers in Romania are from urban areas and experience symptoms at work, suggesting that public measures to reduce pollen levels will benefit the productivity and overall health of the Romanian public. With the collection of more survey results, we hope to see a further investigation of car usage in Romania and how it may impact air pollution and pollen allergies.

At the completion of our project, we compiled and presented all relevant information about pollen allergies from global and local sources, developed a “Correlation Machine” for ease of analysis, and proved that Romania is observing a similar trend to other countries that are heavily impacted by pollen. Our project team, along with our collaborator, Dr. Leru and her research team believe that with climate change, urbanization, and the immediate threat of COVID-19, it is more important now than ever before to gather more research in Romania regarding pollen allergies in order to protect the health of the public. Dr. Leru has advocated for the establishment of a national allergy network in Romania, and we support this suggestion as the best way to advance research that can be used to help the public cope with increased pollen allergies.