Battling allergy season
April showers bring a lot more than May flowers. Tree and grass pollen, mold spores and other microscopic flying organic matter have already sent tissue sales soaring at the start of this year’s allergy season. Judging by its suffering population — sneezers, snorters and red-eyed antihistamine poppers — Munich is every bit as allergen-laden as a countryside meadow. If you are among those who sniffle from March to September, there are a few tools on the Web for you. At the German-language site www.adiz.com (Allergie-, Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum), visitors can sign up for daily pollen forecasts via email. Simply enter your email address and the pollens to which you are allergic, and you will soon know when it is okay to sleep with the window open! Other features of the site include detailed medical advice for hay fever sufferers and explanations regarding the cross reactions of pollens and foodstuffs. For those lacking good German-language skills, www.wetterleuchten.de offers an easy-to-read pollen chart for the year, replete with smily faces and acorns marking good and bad days. Heading to the U.S. for a spring or summer vacation? Both www.cnn.com and www.weather.com offer pollen reports for all states. Though a cure for allergies continues to allude, surfing for tips before spring has fully sprung is good preventative medicine.