In the event of a stormy episode, allergic people see their increased sensitivity, and asthmatics may need urgent care because of respiratory distress. It’s stormy asthma.
Ile-de-France experienced major storms in early June, after a first peak of heat. As Le Parisien reports, the Simone Veil hospital in Eaubonne, in Val-d’Oise, received around sixty people alone over a weekend. Caregivers welcomed people with asthma, in particular, suffering from respiratory distress. People with allergies could also experience a particularly unpleasant sequence. There is a link between the two phenomena: this is called thunderstorm asthma.
What triggers thunderstorm asthma?
Thunderstorm asthma is a severe asthma attack that is triggered during a thunderstorm — and is even made worse by the thunderstorm. This can also affect people with allergies, since the source is largely grasses, pollen.
As a Harvard study explains, this worsening of asthma comes from a particular series of events triggered by the storm:
- The cold descending currents, which are expressed in particular by the gusts, concentrate the particles carried by the wind – such as pollen – in large quantities;
- These particles go back then in groups in the clouds, where the humidity is high;
- In this context, the particles reduce at a size that allows them to easily enter the nose, sinuses and lungs » ;
Where the usual allergies are limited to rhinitis in normal times, they can thus reach the bronchi in the event of a storm; which causes respiratory distress in asthmatics. This is why this asthma is also treated by inhaling aerosols which free the bronchi.
This problem does not affect everyone and, even in people with asthma, it does not occur with every thunderstorm. During the episode of June 10-11, 2023 in France, hospitals received relatively young people, as RTL reports, who had no knowledge of being asthmatic before.
A 2022 study showed that 144 out of 228 people with seasonal allergies said they had asthma from a thunderstorm, a figure of 65%. And nearly half of those people then experienced severe asthma.
There are notoriously local episodes of thunderstorm asthma that are more intense than others. In Australia, November 21, 2016 gave rise to a scientific study to understand the phenomenon: 9,000 people were affected by storm asthma requiring urgent care, in the metropolis of Melbourne.
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