A field experiment conducted by scientists from the University of Milano-Bicocca has demonstrated that high levels of car pollution causes Ragweed pollen (Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.) to be more allergenic.
- Photo credit: Alfi007
This has the inconvenient and worrisome effect of causing more people to develop allergies to the pollen in their environment. Interestingly, the difference does not lie in the percentage of pollen grains distributed by plants along high-traffic roads compared to plants found in lower-traffic areas. Rather, the difference was found in the allergenicity of the pollen grains themselves, where the pollen collected from the plants in higher-traffic areas contained more allergens than their low-traffic counterparts.