Naomi Girson | opinions editor

Something recently crossed my desk that made me start to ponder: Had people known a little bit more about the environment decades ago, where would we all be now?

I was watching Hannah Einbinder’s comedy special titled “Everything Must Go” last week, and I realized that I’m starting to become a pretty big fan of her. A lot of it has to do with her awareness of society — thus my environmental epiphany.

She has this amazing and wildly informative bit during her standup that is about botanical sexism found in urban tree development. There was a declaration in urban development that all the trees planted should be of the boy variety, because girl trees drop more pods, seeds and fruit, which is unbecoming in residential areas, according to Einbinder.

However, the problem goes further than a couple jokes in a stand-up routine, and was first recognized by horticulturist, Tom Ogren, who noted that he has seen an overwhelming amount of pollen and male species of trees all over the world.

Ogren and others have traced the origin of the overwhelming boy-tree epidemic to a 1949 United States Department of Agriculture recommendation.

“The female flowers develop into a stone fruit with a malodorous, fleshy outer layer, which, when the fruit falls, makes pavements slippery and disagreeable. For that reason, only trees that bear male flowers should be planted,” reads “Trees: The Yearbook of Agriculture,” which is a federal reference book from the department of agriculture.

Ogren observed large, thick amounts of pollen coating cars, streets and buildings — the culprit being all the cultivated male trees.

Pollen allergies have increased in recent years, which is a large contributor to hay fever and, subsequently, asthma. In 2024, roughly 31% of adults had a diagnosed seasonal allergy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

According to Climate Central, there are other culprits for the increase in allergies, such as climate change bringing longer, earlier, warmer springs and carbon pollution. But it’s clear that the male trunk takeover didn’t do us any favors.

If a more equal number of female and male species of trees were planted in the 1950s, sure, we might have more fruit and pods to deal with, but pollen wouldn’t have gone unchecked.

It feels like there are a lot of problems we are dealing with now that reflect this pollen problem. The generations before seemed to make decisions based off of short-term benefits, and now we are reaping the long-term consequences.

Take razor blade slots as a smaller example. In the early 1900s, some homeowners decided it would be a good idea to cut a slot in their medicine cabinet for an easy, mess-free way to dispose of razor blades. The only problem was, those blades had nowhere to go but the wall. Now, when people are giving their mid-century homes a much-needed refresh, they are finding piles of old, rusty razor blades from ghosts of homeowners’ past.

Maybe your house doesn’t have one of these pesky razor blade slots, so you don’t really resonate with that example. I can do you one better.

Lead paint — now known to be a toxic, harmful substance — was the primary material to coat your house with in the early 1900s. Lead paint was seen as desirable because it was durable, cheap and weather resistant. However, it didn’t take long for people to start seeing side effects and suffering from health problems, including reproductive and cardiovascular disease, as a result. It took until 1971 for Congress to pass the first federal ban on the substance, according to the CDC.

If only there was a scientist in the early 1900s who was able to recognize that what goes on the walls inside your home shouldn’t just be cheap and accessible. Toxicity was not even a concern then, and now there are still worries about long-standing structures that may have been covered with lead paint decades ago.

But it’s not just the immediately harmful, side-effect ridden substances that are blighting us. It’s single-use plastic too. When did it become the norm to throw everything from your meal into the trash?

Sure, it’s convenient, but then again, so is a dishwasher. Apparently, the first big breakthrough in plastic was because of a competition held by a New York billiard ball company in the 1860s to find a better alternative to ivory (to save the elephants, of course). During the hunt for alternative materials, the emergence of synthetic polymer, cellophane and polyethylene came about. Think Saran Wrap and plastic bags.

All of these new materials culminated in a post-war world, and at the same time, home freezers and microwaves started to become mainstream, leading to more packaged foods and tv dinners, according to a Team Britannica article titled “A Brief History of Single Use Plastic.”

There was a cry for convenience, but the cry to “save the turtles” was too far in the future to hear. If only the solution to use less ivory had something to do with recyclable, multi-use materials, we might all be keeping utensils in our backpacks now.

But some of us still can.

Though we can look back and shake our fists in disappointment at the generations before us, we have so much opportunity to make better decisions with the knowledge and resources we have now.

We as a society can recognize that seasonal allergies are getting worse, and planting female species of trees can combat that. I for one will never forget the haunting images of “garbage island,” and it is not that hard to bring a reusable cup to work, keep tote bags in your car and scold companies that still insist on their single-use plastic materials. We can choose substances that go into our house, not just based on convenience but on safety requirements.

I, for one, want my kids to play outside with their favorite reusable water bottles, breathing in fresh air for as long as we all can.

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu