Allergens Overview
Many countries have special schools for children with severe asthma and other allergies. Italian children are sent to one in the Italian Alps, where there is no trace of pollen, house-dust mite, or animal allergens. After nine months these children are a great deal healthier and more active - all their lung function tests are vastly improved. Blood tests show that they are actually less allergic to common allergens than before.
You may not be able to do quite this well at home, but all allergens and irritants can be avoided to some extent. Even if you can’t eliminate them completely, you can certainly reduce your exposure.
Before you start, it is important to be clear about exactly what affects you, otherwise you will be wasting a lot of effort. For example, people who are allergic to dust mite often think that a dusty house will necessarily be worse for them than an apparently clean house, but this is not so (see p. 115). Or they may say ‘Oh, I got asthma on holiday, because the roads were so dusty and I’m allergic to dust,’ forgetting that only house dust contains dust mites. The road dust may have acted as an irritant, and helped to spark the asthma attacks, or it may have contained pollen or mould spores - but it does not contain dust mites or their allergens. Blaming the wrong thing for the asthma attack means that the real culprit is not identified.
If you are not absolutely sure what causes your allergies, skin-prick tests (see p. 91) can identify the allergen. These are especially recommended if your reactions to the presumed allergen are inconsistent, or you don’t respond to the anti-allergen programmes described here. For example, a few people who react to house dust are not allergic to dust mites, but to something else in the dust such as wool fibres or mould spores, or particles from cockroaches, house
flies, carpet beetles or a long-departed cat. Even pollen that has accumulated in house dust can provoke allergic reactions - if you are not an over-keen duster, it can still be there long after the pollen season.
If you have hayfever, knowing which pollens cause your symptoms (and learning to recognise the plants concerned) is useful. You will probably need skin-prick tests to be sure. ‘Hayfever’ can even be a seasonal mould allergy in some people (see p. 27).
Tackling allergens is now big business. There are a lot of people out there competing for your money and false claims are common, especially for anti-mite products. Only a few manufacturers are deliberately misleading, and most false claims probably stem from ignorance or wishful thinking, but be very sure you know the facts about your allergen before you buy.
Air cleaners are a good example. A really good quality air cleaner (which uses a HEPA filter - a High Efficiency Particulate Air filter) is an expensive purchase and, as the advertising tells you, it takes out very small particles with staggering efficiency. But this is entirely irrelevant if the source of those particles is no distance at all from your nose - your mite-infested pillow, for example, or the cat on your lap.
Something else that advertisements for air cleaners rarely mention is that unless you reduce allergen production - tackling mould growth in the house, for example, or keeping the dog outside - the filter can’t help much. In short, air cleaners do have their uses for some allergens, but they can’t work miracles.
The products mentioned here, if not available in your locality, can be bought mail-order from specialist suppliers of anti-allergy products (see p. 255). Note that some offer both very good products and distinctly doubtful products, so judge each item on its individual merits. Ask to see scientific evidence that it works.
Don’t be taken in by vague statements such as anti-allergenic’ - get the facts. This label is often used on pillows with synthetic filling, for example, and people assume that it refers to dust-mite allergy, whereas it simply means that the pillow does not contain feathers. But unless you are allergic to feathers, there is no reason to avoid feather pillows. (In fact, if not covered with mite-proof covers, synthetic pillows collect more dust-mites than feather pillows, because the fabric used for the cover is less tightly woven and the mites and skin particles get in more easily.)
Bad advice is also a hazard. Some of it just wastes your time and effort, but some could actually increase your exposure to the allergen. Advice to vacuum floors daily, or to vacuum beds, is commonplace but this achieves little and it means breathing much more allergen unless you have the right kind of vacuum cleaner. One health magazine even advised its readers with dust-mite allergy to ‘air mattresses by regularly turning them’. This will not affect mite numbers at all, but it will shoot massive amounts of mite allergen out of the mattress and into the nose and lungs.
Ridding your house of allergens and irritants is, in itself, a hazardous procedure because more of the offending substances will be released into the air during the work. If you take up carpets or remove mattresses, dust-mite allergens and mould spores will be churned up in their millions. Just bundling up a duvet will produce invisible clouds of dust mite allergen - and cat allergen, if your pet once slept on the bed.
Ideally, the allergic individual should not do the work, nor be in the house until it is 100% complete and the house has been very thoroughly aired. This is particularly important for those with chronic sinusitis and mould growth in the house, because of the risk of fungal infections in the sinuses (see p. 32).
If you are an allergy sufferer and have absolutely no choice but to do the work yourself, or to be present, then you should get a good quality dust mask and wear it throughout - only take it off when you go outdoors. Those with atopic eczema and sensitivity to airborne allergens should cover their skin carefully -with clothing, not barrier cream.
An ordinary hardware-shop dust mask is not adequate for most allergens - it only takes out really big particles and lets through all the common airborne allergens except pollen. You need a more serious sort of mask, designed for workplace use and conforming to official standards. Before buying one, ask what is the smallest size of particle that it filters out (at 90% efficiency, or better). Compare this with the particle size of your allergen (given in the articles that follow).
You must be able to breathe well through the mask when physically active, and it must fit tightly against your face, forming a seal at all edges. Beards and moustaches tend to prevent this - as does stubble.
Masks that combine an activated carbon filter with a dust filter will take out gases and chemical vapours as well as particles. Cycle shops now sell such masks -or try an industrial supplier. Such a mask can be useful if you are affected by traffic exhaust or industrial pollution as well as an allergen, for example, or if you are exposed temporarily to wet paint or other fumes at home. Activated carbon masks should also filter out the irritant substances from oil-seed rape plants.
Some people who try the anti-allergen programmes feel much better quite fast. But generally these are long-term strategies - you may not reap any benefits for a few weeks, and the improvement may be small at first. Sometimes it takes several months for the full effects to be felt, so be persistent.