Environmental Allergy Clinic
Environmental allergies are caused by both indoor and outdoor allergens, such as pollen and dust mites.
Diagnosing Environmental Allergies
The first step in diagnosing an environmental allergy is assessing the patient’s medical history and allergy symptoms. Examining when symptoms present themselves (season, all year round) and where symptoms seem to worsen (indoors, outdoors, around animals) will help to narrow our allergist specialist’s focus.
In order to confirm that a specific environmental allergen is responsible for your symptoms, a skin prick test may be conducted. A person can be allergic to more than one allergen; some people may suffer mildly year-round from one allergy, and have a separate allergen affect them seasonally, or only in certain circumstances.
Treating Environmental Allergies
Once the allergen(s) has been identified, the allergist may prescribe medication (usually an antihistamine) or a course of Allergen Immunotherapy. Allergen Immunotherapy has been proven to be very effective in treating several environmental allergies.
Common Environmental Allergies
Pollen is the culprit behind most seasonal environmental allergy symptoms. Plants such as ragweed, grass, and seasonal trees, such as birch, often take the blame, however, patients typically react to the pollen that they produce, and not the plant itself.
Plants enter into their pollination phase at different times during the year, but all occur during the warmer months of spring, summer, and fall. Pollen counts have been shown to surge on warm and windy days.
The three most common pollen allergy-causing plants pollinate at specific times of year:
Grass Pollen: May, June, and July
Ragweed pollen: late summer and into fall.
Seasonal trees (birch pollen is most common): April – June
Dust mites are a common – yet relatively unknown allergen; Dust mites are tiny insects, closely related to ticks, which live in household dust, and are a common household allergen.
Dust mites thrive in the bedroom environment more than anywhere else in a household. Although dust mites are everywhere, a few simple environmental measures can dramatically improve your allergy and asthma symptoms, as well as decrease the amount of medication you may currently require.
Dust mite avoidance is the safest and among the most effective ways to treat allergies – for recommended dust mite avoidance tips, please visit our Patient Resources.
Natural rubber latex is a byproduct of sap from the rubber tree; as such, it is technically categorized as an environmental allergy. Symptoms present themselves if patients are sensitive to the proteins found in the natural rubber latex.
Rubber gloves are the main source of allergic reactions, although latex is also used in other products such as condoms and some medical devices.
For a more details regarding Latex allergies, please consult the Latex Allergy PDF found on the Patient Resources page.