U.S. News

2432 readers

59 users here now

News about and pertaining to the United States and its people.

Please read what's functionally the mission statement before posting for the first time. We have a narrower definition of news than you might be accustomed to.

Guidelines for submissions:

Post the original source of information as the link.
If there is any Nazi imagery in the linked story, mark your post NSFW.
Advocating violence is not allowed on Beehaw in general.
If there is a paywall, provide an archive link in the body.
Post using the original headline; edits for clarity (as in providing crucial info a clickbait hed omits) are fine.
Social media is not a news source.

For World News, see the News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

Powderhorn@beehaw.org

‘Explosive increase’ of ticks that cause meat allergy in US due to climate crisis (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned.

Lone star ticks have taken advantage of rising temperatures by the human-caused climate crisis to expand from their heartland in the south-east US to areas previously too cold for them, in recent years marching as far north as New York and even Maine, as well as pushing westwards.

The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.

That's one way to reduce meat consumption, I guess.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] pixelpop3@beehaw.org 1 points 2 days ago

I had a coworker a few years ago who got this meat allergy (he hunted deer and it pretty much killed him that he couldn't eat his kills). He eventually recovered but it's the most bizarre thing.