Quality of Life and Allergies, 36 and 3, Respectively.

Our friends over in Shanghai let us know last week that the annual Quality of Living reports had come out, and that they were 103rd on the list. Boston ranked 36, above six other cities-with-an-ist in the top 100, seven if you count Shanghai at 103. We fell behind Toronto, San Francisco, and Paris for quality of living. Today we’re wondering how fast London, DC, and Chicago will catch up to us when they hear about our susceptibility to allergies. Does a sniffy nose in springtime factor into the Mercer Quality of Living rankings? Probably under the "Natural Environment" in some minute way, but we'll talk about it anyway.

We read today that the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America found Boston to be the third most difficult city in the United States for spring allergy sufferers. Mold spores combined pollen from flowering trees, bushes and plants work to rank the Boston metro high on the list, only behind Hartford, Conn. And Greensville, SC. Bostonist watches a lot of these rankings as they come through, usually they present no significant change – perhaps a shuffle from number 10 to number 14 or 47 up to 44, but the Spring Allergy Capitols list shot Boston from 47 up to 3 this year. The Herald gives us a rundown of the basic facts in the report while the Globe just tells us that it is allergy season so stay away from things we’re allergic to – by quoting doctors who say the same (insert "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" joke).

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America cites not only the pollen and mold levels in their report, but the high number of over the counter and prescription medicines purchased (about 2.5 per patient, 2.1 per patient is average) consumed in the Boston area. Bostonist is no statistical genius, but we do dabble from time to time. We notice one thing curious in the report – our “Medicine Utilization per Patient” is higher than average and our “Board Certified Allergists per Patient” is low average. Seems like we’re not getting good recommendations from the allergists, they’re over prescribing, or, our own wacky position, that since meth manufacture is on the rise and the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products are being purchased at staggering rates for meth manufacture - greatly skewing the numbers on which we're judged as a allergy capitol. But feel free to dismiss this idea as crazy, we know Sudafed is more for colds than allergies (for that you take Benadryl) and we only saw the results from the studies and made an inference from their broad generalizations, no data was actually analyzed in this conclusion. Still, Bostonist wouldn’t be surprised to read a Herald headline “Meth Manufacturer Inflames Allergy Rating.”

Photo of the nasty yellow stuff that clogs our sinus' courtesy Flickr user: Kodama