Is This Really Surprising?

From Wired Science comes news of a study that shows that living in rural areas boosts immunity to allergies. Or, in other words, kids are less likely to develop allergies if they are exposed to a lot of biodiversity, er, plants and stuff.

I guess the idea is another demonstration of a counter-conventional wisdom. In this case, the conventional wisdom is to isolate kids from all that nasty pollen and dirt and Nature so they won’t develop allergies. If they aren’t exposed, they won’t get it! The only problem is I’m not so sure this is conventional wisdom.

We’ve seen a pretty steady stream of studies demonstrating that exposing kids to environmental stresses like dirt and pollen actually boost the immune system, ultimately making the child healthier, not less so. Seems to me this is just another example of that trend.