Concentrations of allergenic fungal spores during thunderstorms
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Abstract
The results of the analysis of the number of days with thunderstorms in 56 stations all over Poland in the period of 19 years, showed that on average there are 24 days during a year with a thunderstorm. Most of the thunderstorms occur in Poland in a warm part of the year (mainly summer) and the number of days with thunderstorms increases from the northwest towards the southeast. Depending on the meteorological conditions the different types of storms are created. The inter-massive storms are typical for the summer period and appear inside a homogeneous air mass. Typical inter-massive storms often occur locally during hot weather in summer, generally in the afternoon. Asthma admissions have been reported to increase during thunderstorms. In some cases, this has been attributed to rises in pollen or fungal spore (particularly Alternaria and Cladosporium) counts. A combination of sensitivity to grass pollen and fungi along with exposure to high levels of these allergens may account for the epidemics of acute asthma occurring during or in proximity to thunderstorms.
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Copyright: © Medical Education sp. z o.o. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
Address reprint requests to: Medical Education, Marcin Kuźma (marcin.kuzma@mededu.pl)
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