Weatherpeople grow accustomed to an incubus of fardels. A fardel, as all readers of this column will already know, is an unwelcome burden, an oppressive load, and figured prominently on Hamlet's list of indesiderata as he mused on the futility of human life. Others he identified, you may recall, were
...the whips and scorns of time
The oppressor's wrongs, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
Now it is the last of these that most concerns your humble scribe this morning. In particular, you may recall Elizabeth Kelly on the letters page (July 17th) asking what had happened to the south and west and north: "Have RTE and Met Eireann simply banished pollen from these areas?" She was referring, of course, to the daily pollen count, often broadcast in conjunction with the weather forecast, and she very reasonably complained that the figures given were always for the east, and that other parts of the country seemed to be ignored.
Pollen is a fine powdery substance exuded for reproductive purposes by plants. Each grain of the powder is minute - a mere millionth of a centimetre in diameter - and at times of moderate concentration there may be only 40 or 50 of these tiny particles in a cubic metre of air. Yet these invisible spores cause great misery to up to 20 per cent of the population; when inhaled by a person allergic to pollen, they cause itchy and watery eyes, a runny nose, and persistent bouts of sneezing - the familiar symptoms of hay fever.
But it is neither the Met Eireann forecaster nor RTE who make predictions of the pollen count. These worthy bodies are merely messengers who pass on such information as they have, and whom proverbially, therefore, it is recommended not to shoot. The excellent work of providing countrywide figures for pollen levels in the atmosphere is done by Dr Paul Dowding and a team of dedicated colleagues in the Botany Department, TCD. They measure the actual concentrations on a daily basis, and then combine this information with predicted weather conditions to arrive at estimates for future times.
Dr Dowding and his colleagues calculate likely pollen levels for the whole country, but it seems that in recent times only figures for the east were getting through to RTE. This however, is being rectified almost as I write, so Ms Kelly may rest assured that the south and west and north will shortly be restored to their rightful places on the pollen map of Ireland.