Climate change causing more allergies among Canadians, experts warn

Much of the rise in allergies and asthma 'can be directly linked to climate change,' said the president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

For the last two years, rushing their toddler to hospital has become the norm for Daniela Mora-Fisher and her husband.

“A cold would become a wheeze. A wheeze would become a crisis,” Mora-Fisher said.

Julian, now three years old, has been “struggling with respiratory distress since probably he was 18 months,” she said.

Mora-Fisher, a foreign-trained physician who now works as a researcher at a Toronto doctor’s office, suspects a combination of allergies and viruses might be triggering what could be asthma. Specialists at her local hospital have seen Julian in their asthma clinic, she said, but they’ve told her they need to wait until he’s old enough to do the breathing tests required to confirm it.

Mora-Fisher and her husband have tried everything they can to reduce potential allergens – including moving out of an old house to try to get away from mould and from busy bus traffic she thought might have been polluting the air.

Allergies in both children and adults have definitely been on the rise over the last several years, said Dr. Susan Waserman, division director of clinical immunology and allergy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

“We’ve been seeing this now for decades,” Waserman said. “It’s eczema. It’s allergic rhinitis. It’s asthma. It’s food allergy. It’s really everything.”

Much of the rise in allergies and asthma “can be directly linked to climate change,” said Dr. Melissa Lem, a family physician in Vancouver and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).