Seasonal Sniffles? Maybe its your Christmas Tree

What Holiday Symbol is GREEN and making you sneeze? Your Christmas Tree could be the answer.

A live Christmas tree could be the culprit behind some folks runny, itchy noses reports Linda Shrieves in an article published in the Orlando Sentinel.

In the article a Connecticut allergy specialist, Dr.John Santilli states; I’ve been in practice for over 30 years and every year between Christmas and New Year’s we have everybody come in with recurring sinus infections.

Dr. Santilli placed a live Christmas tree inside an intern’s apartment and took air samples for two weeks. (Santilli keeps his Christmas tree on a porch until Christmas Eve.) For the first three days, the mold counts inside the apartment hovered around 800 spores per cubic meter of air, compared with a normal range of 500 to 700 spores per cubic meter. But by day 14, the mold count had skyrocketed to 5,000 spores per cubic meter. “The longer you keep the tree up, the worse it gets,” said Santilli, who presented his study at a recent national meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in Dallas. Determined to prove his point by the second week, the tree was putting out a bucket of spores. That’s when it gets to be a problem, especially if you have asthma or are prone to sinus infections.”

Santilli says the dead tree begins decaying shortly after it’s cut. Though most of us don’t associate mold with Christmas trees, “Mother Nature’s cleanup crew is the mold, he said. “The molds take over and start decaying it.”

Although the medical community has long known about “Christmas tree allergy,” there has been some debate over what causes the sneezing, runny noses and watery eyes: pollen or mold.

Canadian researchers interviewed 1,657 allergy patients in 1969 and theorized that as many as 7 percent of people with allergies also may be allergic to their Christmas trees.

That team suspected the culprits were pollens that stuck to the Christmas tree and balsam resins. Santilli, on the other hand, thinks his new research proves that mold may be the biggest problem.

A Minnesota based company markets an EPA approved GREEN Mold and Mildew preventer called Vital Oxide. Vital Oxide is completely odorless, and is water based. This is a perfect product to use to keep the mold problem at bay states Tom Heller, managing partner of WorldWide Oxide, the distributor of the EPA approved GREEN Vital Oxide. For more information visit then company website at www.worldwideoxide.com.

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