A new review says Australia is unprepared for climate change impact on allergies.

A rise in dangerous and even fatal asthma and other allergic attacks – as occurred in Melbourne’s deadly 2016 ‘thunderstorm asthma event’ – could be one of Australia’s biggest health challenges from climate change, academics warn.

Associate Professor Paul Beggs says almost all the research about climate change’s effects on allergies is from overseas, and Australian-focused research “is therefore urgently needed”.

He said Australia’s systems for monitoring, reporting and forecasting atmospheric concentrations of allergens such as pollen are not fit for purpose.

In November 2016, Melbourne experienced “the world’s largest, most catastrophic epidemic thunderstorm asthma event”, causing thousands of emergency department presentations, hundreds of asthma-related hospital admissions and 10 deaths.

The odds of such extreme weather events are greatly increased with climate change, the review finds.

Evidence shows that higher temperatures can also lead to increased production of fungal spores, another trigger for many susceptible people, as well as boosting indoor moisture and mould growth, which can cause allergic reactions.

“It could be argued that these impacts pose a serious climate change-human health risk to Australia and that they should therefore be among Australia’s climate change-human health priorities,” Associate Professor Beggs says.

But Australia’s research efforts in this area have been woefully inadequate, and much of the international research has been done in climates unlike our own, involving allergens that are not common here.

Our allergen monitoring is equally poor, Associate Professor Beggs says, with no national, state or territory body having responsibility for the monitoring, reporting and forecasting of environmental allergens.

What monitoring exists is sparse and sporadic. For example, in Melbourne, scene of the deadly thunderstorm asthma event, allergen monitoring only occurs for three months of the year.

Elsewhere in Australia, monitoring remains precarious, with all sites either unfunded or subsisting on short-term funding.

The full analysis is accessible here.