Pollen.com places Florida as having high pollen count levels on it’s National Allergy Map.<\/p>\n
LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014 A Tampa Bay-area city is being recognized as one of the allergy capitals of the U.S. in 2026.<\/p>\n
Lakeland in Polk County was ranked the 20th most challenging city to live with pollen allergies in the country by a report from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA).<\/a><\/p>\n Factors taken into account in the report analyzed are pollen scores for tree, grass and weed pollen, over-the-counter medication use and the number of available allergy specialists.\u00a0<\/p>\n The study labels Lakeland as “worse than average<\/a>” overall, including for availability of board-certified allergists\/immunologists. It received an average for overall amount of tree, grass and weed pollen, and an average for use of over-the-counter allergy medicine.<\/p>\n Lakeland is the only Florida city ranked in the top 20 allergy capitals; however, other local cities such as Sarasota and Tampa were ranked No. 28 and 29, respectively.<\/p>\n Pollen.com<\/a> places Florida as having high pollen count levels on it’s National Allergy Map.<\/p>\n As of Wednesday, the website grades the city of Tampa a 10.2\/12 on it’s allergy report<\/a>, a slight increase from Tuesday at a 10. It reports the city will have a 9.7 on Thursday.<\/p>\n AAFA says the southeast region of the U.S. tends to have higher allergy capitals due to warmer, more humid climates that support pollen production.<\/p>\n The study claims weather phenomena such as atmospheric rivers, warmer temperatures and droughts may have played a significant role in pollen production in 2025. The entire state of Florida was recently recorded in 100% drought coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n The number one allergy capital in the U.S., according to AAFA, is Boise, Idaho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pollen.com places Florida as having high pollen count levels on it’s National Allergy Map. LAKELAND, Fla. \u2014 A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-187720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-tampa","9":"tag-tampa-headlines","10":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}