Pollen

Last Thursday, when Ian Riley started sneezing and could not stop, his parents called allergist Donald Dvorin for an appointment. Yesterday, Dvorin managed to squeeze him in at his Mount Laurel office. The physician gave the Cherry Hill teen a couple of squirts of Astelin, a nasal spray, and the sneezing stopped. "This is the worst allergy season in my life," said Riley, 14. If it feels like the worst allergy season to Riley, that is only because it very well might be one of the worst allergy seasons in decades, certainly in many allergists' memories.

Pollen isn't just the stuff that coats our windshields with a fine powder and makes some of us sneeze uncontrollably in the warm weather months; it's also pure male sex. The birds and the wheeze, if you will. Pollen is "tiny little grains which represent the male half of the fertilization process," said Dr. Michael Phillips, a professor, clinician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's allergy and immunolgy department. "It's spread to the female half, where fertilization takes place.

Thank your lucky pollen grains if you don't suffer from seasonal allergies. For those who do, life in the spring and summer can be unbearable. Molly Damian, 26, who used to commute from Philadelphia to her job in Plymouth Meeting, remembers how debilitating her allergies could get. "One time my allergies were so bad that my eyes were almost swollen shut," said Damian, a registered nurse who now works in a Port Richmond dialysis unit. "The thought of driving on the Schuylkill and not being able to see didn't thrill me. I called in sick.

El Nino is making us el sicko. The world's best-known climate confuser, responsible for our mild winter, is also putting allergy sufferers under the weather. "Due to the unusual effects of El Nino, with the warm and moist winter, plants have survived well, resulting in more pollen and an earlier and longer allergy season," said Dr. Michael Phillips, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's allergy and immunology department. We're going to be hit with a higher than normal amount of pollen because some of the buds on trees and in grass and weeds are usually killed as a result of cold weather, especially ice storms, said Phillips, who divides his time at Penn teaching, performing research and treating patients with allergies.

What else can we blame on El Nino? "This [is becoming] a very tough year for sinus allergy sufferers," Dr. Donald J. Dvorin, an allergist at the Asthma Center in Philadelphia, said from his Cherry Hill office. "We are expecting an earlier peak of the spring pollen season," Dvorin said, "because of the warm weather and, of course, [because] the rain and moisture have been tremendous. " What does Dvorin call it? "The El Nino effect. " This is the earliest that he has seen evidence of pollen in the air since he came to Philadelphia in 1985.

The preventive medicine, Violet David thought, was right there in her Norristown backyard. Fresh lemons, which she'd squeeze into warm water and drink. Add herbs like goldenseal root, and she'd have the ultimate allergy antidote. Sadly, even the greatest gardener couldn't fight the forces of nature at the opening day of the Philadelphia Flower Show. "I'm all sneezy," said David, patting a tissue to her weepy eyes. Her sister, Paula Robinson, had the I-told-you-so look mastered: "I took my Benadryl before I came.

For most doctors, hanging out in boiler rooms, racing up ladders and scampering across rooftops would not be part of a typical day's rounds. Then again, there's nothing typical about the work Donald Dvorin performs. An allergy specialist, Dvorin is in charge of South Jersey's new, and only, pollen and mold collecting station, on top of the Joseph D. Sharp Elementary School, in Cherry Hill. Every morning about 7 - a peak time for pollen to rise - Dvorin makes his way through the Sharp School boiler room, pushing aside soft-bristle brooms to get to a ladder.

THE WILD THING GETS PAT ON THE BACK FOR VET VISIT C'mon, give Mitch Williams a break, will you? The Inquirer article May 30, after the Phillies victory over the Houston Astros, depicted Williams as unemotional in what was most likely his last appearance at the Vet. Please inform your writer, Michael Bamberger, who ended his story by writing that Williams "packed his toothbrush and zipped up his bag and was gone," that he apparently was...

Everywhere you look, people are sneezing. Rubbing their eyes. Rubbing their noses So many people have allergies - an estimated 35 million Americans with pollen allergies - that it makes you wonder. Maybe we're falling apart. As a group, that is. "No, I don't think we're evolving into a weak species," said Dr. Marc Goldstein, Hahnemann University allergist and clinical immunologist. "Our environment is becoming more hostile. We're living in air-polluted environments, outdoors and indoors.