A national report issued on Wednesday that cites Toledo as America's 17th “sneeziest and wheeziest” city has drawn the ire of an industry trade group.

But a University of Toledo respiratory-care specialist who had nothing to do with it said the finding “doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Craig Black, associate professor and director of UT’s respiratory-care program, said he believes the premise of the report, in which the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council examined growth of ragweed pollen and ozone pollution, is sound and should underscore the need to take climate change more seriously from a public-health standpoint.

The report is one of the few that attempt to make connections between allergies and asthma, which a Washington-based think tank called Energy in Depth calls too much of a stretch. Energy in Depth was founded in 2009 by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Toledo is 17th of 35 “sneeziest and wheeziest” cities the NRDC cited as bad enough to be ranked for ragweed pollen and smog-forming ozone. It is one of seven Ohio cities — the most of any state — to make the list. Dayton is 15th, Cleveland is 16th, Akron is 20th, Cincinnati is 23rd, Youngstown is 33rd, and Columbus is 34th.

Chicago and Detroit are the two highest-ranking cities in the Great Lakes region, at sixth and seventh place, respectively.

As a region, the Great Lakes area is better off that the Los Angeles and St. Louis areas, but worse than the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, according to the NRDC’s report.

Toledo and other cities in the Great Lakes region have a “perfect storm” for allergies and asthma because of the region’s relatively mild climate, its abundance of water and sunlight, and the growing richness of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Carbon is the fuel,” Mr. Black said. “Carbon dioxide is basically the fuel for plants to carry out photosynthesis.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records show Earth’s global atmospheric level of carbon surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in modern history in March, after previously surpassing that mark in the Arctic in 2012 and at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 2013. Scientists believe that is likely the first time in 2 to 5 million years that Earth’s global atmospheric level for carbon has been that high.

Ragweed is “just growing crazy” because of all that carbon in the atmosphere, Mr. Black said.

Conditions also are ideal in northwest Ohio for the formation of smog-forming ozone, he said. And, ironically, much of Ohio’s smog may not be as directly related to the state’s heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants as people are led to believe, Mr. Black said.

He said that while Ohio smokestacks definitely have an effect on the air quality of New England and Mid-Atlantic states, much of the Buckeye State’s pollution drifts here from coal-fired power plants out West.

“If you look at prevailing wind patterns, you’re going to see a lot of pollution from out west comes this direction,” Mr. Black said.

During a conference call with reporters, Juan Declet-Barreto, an NRDC report co-author and a climate and health research fellow for the group, described allergens and asthma triggers as a “double-whammy [that] will only intensify if we don’t take steps to reduce climate change.”

Dr. Samantha Ahdoot, an Alexandria, Va.-based pediatrician, said the allergy season has expanded in recent years, with ticks and mosquitoes living longer in northern latitudes. That has created more than respiratory problems, such as a greater incidence of Lyme disease in states such as New Hampshire and Delaware, she said.

“The U.S. pollen season has changed over the past 20 years,” Dr. Ahdoot said. “Most people think allergies have gotten worse, and they have.”

Energy in Depth, a petroleum industry trade group, stated in a recent blog post it believes the NRDC is trying to galvanize support for President Obama’s tougher rules on coal-fired power plants, which are expected to be finalized this summer. Coal-fired power plants are the largest stationary source of climate-altering carbon pollution.

The NRDC recommended support for those rules in addition to other measures. A group spokesman, Samantha Williams, told The Blade it wants the Kasich administration to thaw Ohio’s unprecedented freeze on renewable energy mandates that went into effect last year.

The NRDC report  states one in three Americans,  109 million people, live in areas where allergies and asthma are aggravated by pollution on a regular basis. The worst city cited in the report for allergies and asthma is Richmond, Va.

People who live in the "sneeziest and wheeziest" areas are more likely to have itchy eyes, runny noses and sneezing, and breathing difficulties, the report said.

An estimated 50 million Americans today have some type of nasal allergy. In 2012, an estimated 7.5 percent of adults and 9.0 percent of children were diagnosed with seasonal allergic rhinitis, or hay fever, the report said.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published May 14, 2015, 4:00 a.m.