EU Allergy Index
The best spots in the EU and England to avoid allergies
Summer is here, and we all want to enjoy it to its full potential while it lasts. However, many of us greet the summer months with feelings of dread, knowing that with the warm weather comes the pollen season, and the seemingly inevitable few weeks of hay fever.
While there are many ways to improve your health that will make the summer more enjoyable, such as exercise, eating a balanced diet and taking appropriate vitamin supplements, none of these will prevent you from falling victim to summer allergies.
However, you can boost your immune system to combat summer allergies by adding anti-inflammatories such as fresh ginger to your daily diet, and by consuming local honey on a regular basis. Local honey is a great option for combating hay fever, as it familiarises your body with local pollens, allowing your immune system to produce antibodies to specifically counter the plants that are local to you.
Unfortunately, the benefits of eating local honey take a while to build up, so this won’t be an effective way of preventing hay fever whilst on your travels. So, why not plan a summer trip that will get you away from the pollen and pollution to a place where you can breathe easy and enjoy the warmer months in peace?
With this in mind, we’ve looked at cities from across the country and Europe to find out which ones are the best for allergy sufferers. So, whether you fancy a holiday abroad or you’re looking to move somewhere more suitable for your allergies, check out our list of the most allergy-friendly locations.
The best places in Europe to live & visit if you have allergies
We’ve looked at several different factors across London and twenty other European capital cities to find out which ones are the best places for allergy sufferers to live or visit for a holiday. Having investigated the air quality, and prevalence of asthma and other wheezing symptoms, we’ve ranked all the cities according to their Allergy Friendliness Score.
1. Riga, Latvia Allergy Friendliness Score: 9.52
Riga, the capital city of Latvia, tops our chart as the best place for allergy sufferers to visit. The very pollution is combined with low rates of asthma and wheezing, resulting in an excellent Allergy Friendliness Score of 9.52.
2. Tallinn, Estonia Allergy Friendliness Score: 9.37
Tallinn takes second place with an Allergy Friendliness Score of 9.37. With the Estonian capital performing so well, it suggests that the Baltic States are an ideal choice of destination for anyone worried about air quality, hay fever, or breathing problems.
3. Zagreb, Croatia Allergy Friendliness Score: 8.99
Taking third place is the Croatian capital Zagreb, with an Allergy Friendliness Score of 8.99. While asthma and symptoms of wheezing are slightly more common here than in Riga or Tallinn, the city has one of the very best air quality scores of just 10 on the Air Quality index.
The best English cities for allergy sufferers
If you prefer to holiday closer to home, or you’re looking to move somewhere new within the UK, then don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ve looked at some of the largest towns and cities in the UK to rank them in terms of how good they are for allergy sufferers. Looking at allergy-related hospital admissions, local asthma rates and air quality, we’ve given each city an overall allergy score and ranked them accordingly. Where does your hometown or holiday destination fare?
1. Liverpool Allergy Score: 8.72
The English city which is best for allergy sufferers is Liverpool, which came top with an Allergy score of 8.72. This coastal city has excellent air quality, scoring as low as 3 on the Air Quality Index, and has a low local asthma rate of 6.40%.
2. Ipswich Allergy Score: 8.63
Ipswich has the second-best allergy score of 8.63. This is due to a very low rate of allergy-related hospital admissions at just 46.5 per 100,000 combined with a near-perfect Air Quality Index score of 1.
3. Derby Allergy Score: 8.62
Derby takes third place for being good for allergy sufferers, with an Allergy Score of 8.62. Derby has excellent quality air, having also received a near-perfect AQI score of 1.
Did your town make the top ten? Check out our full ranking of 38 UK towns and cities to find
the best location for allergy sufferers near you.
Methodology
We wanted to find the best places in Europe and the UK for people with allergies. To do this, we first created a list of European capital cities and another list of the UK’s biggest towns and cities.
For the EU cities, we collected air quality data from IQAir and paired it with data on asthma prevalence and wheezing symptoms from Our World in Data and the US National Library of Medicine. There were several different ways of measuring the asthma rate, so we took an average across three different scores to create our own asthma measurement. We then combined the air quality score, asthma rate and wheezing symptom rate into a single, equally balanced score. This allowed us to rank them and reveal the best locations for allergy sufferers.
For the UK towns and cities, we also took air quality data from IQAir and then combined it with allergy-related hospital admission data from NHS Digital and data on asthma prevalence from Public Health England. We then paired towns and cities with data from nearby hospitals, taking average scores where multiple hospitals served one location. We then combined these factors into a single score and ranked the locations accordingly, revealing the best places in England for allergy sufferers.
Where data was not available for a town or city for any of the factors either in the EU or UK data, that location was removed from the list. Therefore not all of the biggest towns and cities in the UK have been included in the list, and not all EU capitals are present in the study. This is also why data there are no entries for cities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as data was unavailable.