There’s something in the air these days

“I tell you, war is hell,” William Sherman famously said during an 1879 speech, and no one knew that better than the soldiers in the trenches during World War I. 

The war to end all wars saw the development of many new ways to kill or otherwise harm our fellow humans. That evolution included the use of chemical warfare. Bis(2-choloroethyl) sulfide, better known as mustard gas, kept the Allied soldiers on edge, forcing them to always be on the lookout for the yellow-tinted toxic cloud creeping across the battlefield. 

Exposure would lead to agonizing death, but quick use of gas masks allowed many to live to fight another day. Inside those life-saving devices was a simple crepe paper filter made with cellucotton, developed by the Kimberly-Clark Co. 

After the war (which we now know didn’t end all wars) the company discovered many more uses for this revolutionary paper product. Making it softer and more pliable, the Texas-based paper giant branded and marketed the cellucotton for many personal hygiene uses, including releasing a “disposable handkerchief” in 1925. 

By the 1930s, Kleenex, with the slogan “Don’t Carry a Cold in Your Pocket,” had essentially replaced traditional pocket handkerchiefs. 

Every home has at least one box of Kleenex, or at least off-brand facial tissue. If you live in a household with children, like me, you have a stockpile. That’s right, I have enough of this cellucotton product stashed away in the closet to make you believe I’m making gas masks for the war effort. And we’re going through them at an alarming rate.

Spring is here. The grass and weeds are growing. Flowers and trees are blooming. That means hay fever. There is a certain shrub in bloom right now that has most of the people in my household, mainly the little ones, sneezing their heads off and reaching for the tissues. Chinese privet was once a widely popular shrub for landscaping. It was brought to the United States in the 1800s and could be found in gardens and around homes everywhere. The famous hedge at UGA’s Sanford Stadium is Chinese privet. 

Thanks to large crops of berries consumed by birds and other wildlife, privet escaped cultivation and began taking over forests and other wooded areas. Now it is scattered along roadsides, among trees and unkempt properties and is classified as a non-native invasive species by the Georgia Forestry Commission. 

Besides being almost impossible to get rid of, each year a single privet bush produces thousands of tiny, white blossoms. The blooms produce a sickly-sweet scent that you can smell from a great distance away. There are few places in rural Georgia where you can drive down the road or even stand in your own backyard and not smell Chinese privet. 

The pollen in these bullies of the horticulture world gives many people a runny nose and sneezing fits. 

There’s little I can do about the privet problem; it spreads faster than most people can cut it down. So, we’re forced to wait for the blooms to wither and fall. 

In the meantime, pass the Kleenex.