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Beating around the Mulberry bush

By: Santosh :+: Under: Health, Opinion, Science
On: ⋅ March 6, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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“Here we go round the mulberry bushHere We Go Round the Mulberry Bush………”

So goes an old nursery rhyme.

Environmentalists and asthma sufferers seem to be singing the same tune on Mulberry trees in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Spring brings an explosion of pollen from paper mulberry trees, an east Asian species planted when the city was built in the 1960’s that has thrived and infested its open spaces.
The trees produce levels of pollen that experts say are among the highest in the world.

Citizens are being hit hard particularly those suffering from pollen allergies

Saeed Anwar, an economist working at an embassy, suffers severely every spring. He said he has known three people who have died as a result of pollen allergy in the past 10 years. “It’s very scary,” he said. “It gets so bad I can’t breath through my nose at all, no matter how many decongestants and tablets I take. For 40 days I have to breath through my mouth.”
“I have to sleep, if at all, sitting. I can’t lie down. I use inhalers, I’m on medication three times a day.”

As a result city authorities in Islamabad started cutting down the trees in large numbers in the 90s, to relieve the suffering of its citizens, but then came under fire from the environmental lobby.

Caught between the environmentalists and allergy sufferers, Hussain said the city was taking a middle path: “Cutting and replacing with environment-friendly trees in phases, gradually.”
He said 36,000 mature paper mulberry trees had been cut, 14,000 in the last two years.

Color me biased but as an asthma sufferer living in southeastern states, I tend to side with the pollen allergy afflicted citizens and the city authorities on this one. While the environment is precious and trees deserved to be preserved, at some stage it becomes necessary to balance quality of human life against protecting the environment. In some cases, when the environment becomes the cause of misery, it is not a bad idea to take a step back as an environmentalist and work on eradicating the source.

“Your eyes start burning, you get a lot of nasal discharge and your throat pains as if you’ve got a cactus sticking in there,” said Wahid, a finance manager at a foreign firm.
“The biggest problem is asthma. You wake up in the night and can’t breathe.”

Those words ring true for me. I’m really not looking forward to Spring.

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