Question: How do you get hay fever?

Frank Longford answered on 14 Mar 2015:

You don’t “get” it really because its not an illness. Hay fever is just an allergic reaction to certain species of pollen. That’s why it happens to people normally in the summer, when plants are reproducing through spreading their pollen and so there’s a lot of it in the air. An allergy is when you body’s immune system is super sensitive to something and goes into overdrive, making it seem like you are ill, even when you’re not. Many people have allergies to a variety of things that are harmless to others, like nuts or latex or chemicals in soaps.

Allergies are either something your are born with or they can develop from over exposure to something. One of my lecturers at my old university was allergic to soap on his hands because he’d worked in a lab with very strong detergents for too long. His wife wasn’t too pleased either because it meant he could never do the washing up!