Clean the Christmas Tree and Keep It Toxin-Free

Dec. 7, 2021 -- Real and artificial trees tin trigger asthma and allergy flare-ups that marque the holidays a misery for immoderate people.

Christmas histrion allergies -- triggered by fashionable varieties similar fir, hemlock, pine, oregon spruce -- are rare. But determination are different allergens successful the premix that tin beryllium triggering for people.

That’s due to the fact that existent trees often question agelong distances to scope your section histrion lot. Before the journey, they’re sprayed down with water, allowing mold to turn on the way, says J. Allen Meadows, MD, past president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and an allergist astatine AllerVie Health successful Alabama.

Artificial trees, meanwhile, tin merchandise nasty chemicals that trigger allergy oregon asthma attacks close aft they’re unwrapped, Meadows says. Each twelvemonth aft that, they tin stitchery particulate successful retention that besides causes symptoms to flare erstwhile they’re unpacked. Packing everything distant successful bags and boxes that are arsenic airtight arsenic imaginable whitethorn trim particulate but not destruct it.

Preventing Symptoms

“Whether it’s artificial oregon a unrecorded tree, I similar to aerial it retired extracurricular earlier I acceptable it up successful my house,” Meadows says. A leafage blower comes successful handy, too, for blasting mold oregon particulate disconnected the histrion earlier you bring it indoors.

Timing besides matters. If you tin clasp disconnected mounting up a histrion until aft the archetypal hard frost wherever you live, past you won’t hazard pollen oregon ragweed getting connected the histrion erstwhile you enactment it outdoors to aerial out, helium says.

And with a existent tree, you request to defy the impulse to enactment it up close aft Thanksgiving, says Sharmilee M. Nyenhuis, MD, an asthma, allergy, and immunology specializer astatine the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System. That’s due to the fact that mold starts to physique up aft astir a week wrong your home.

If you can’t basal the thought of waiting until mid-December to enactment up a existent tree, you whitethorn besides beryllium capable to chopped down connected mold by spraying it with a solution of fractional water, fractional vinegar, she suggests. A vinegar solution tin besides region mold from fake trees.

The aforesaid masks that radical person been wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic tin besides travel successful useful for mounting up and decorating the tree, Nyenhuis says. Wearing a disguise to unpack ornaments, acceptable up and decorate the tree, and grip immoderate different seasonal decorations you instrumentality retired of retention tin assistance lessen grounds flares caused by mold and dust.

And you tin besides instrumentality steps to forestall asthma and allergy attacks by moving with your doc to reappraisal and revise your medicine arsenic needed to code immoderate vulnerability to mold oregon particulate from the tree, Meadows says.

“The bottommost enactment is if your asthma and allergies are good controlled, you should beryllium capable to tolerate places with unrecorded trees,” helium says.