What Holiday Symbol is GREEN and making you sneeze? Your Christmas Tree could be the answer.

Allergists have long suspected that live Christmas trees are the culprits behind some folks' runny, itchy noses during the holidays reports an article from the Orlando Sentinel written by Linda Shrieves.

In the article a Connecticut allergy specialist, Dr.John Santilli states; I've been in practice for over 30 years and every year between Christmas and New Year's we have everybody come in with recurring sinus infections.

Determined to prove his point, Santilli placed a live Christmas tree inside an intern's apartment and took air samples for two weeks. For the first three days, the mold counts inside the apartment hovered around 800 spores per cubic meter of air, compared with a normal range of 500 to 700 spores per cubic meter. But by day 14, the mold count had skyrocketed to 5,000 spores per cubic meter. "The longer you keep the tree up, the worse it gets," said Santilli, who presented his study at a recent national meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in Dallas. "By the second week, the tree was putting out a bucket of spores. That's when it gets to be a problem, especially if you have asthma or are prone to sinus infections."

Though most of us don't associate mold with Christmas trees, Santilli says the dead tree begins decaying shortly after it's cut. "The molds take over and start decaying it." Mother Nature's cleanup crew is the mold, he said.

Although "Christmas Tree Allergy" is well known in the medical community there has been some debate over what causes the sneezing, runny noses and watery eyes: pollen or mold.

Canadian researchers interviewed 1,657 allergy patients in 1969 and theorized that as many as 7 percent of people with allergies also may be allergic to their Christmas trees.

That Canadian team suspected the culprits were pollens that stuck to the Christmas tree and balsam resins. Santilli, on the other hand, thinks his new research proves that mold may be the biggest problem.

Minnesota based WorldWide Oxide offers an EPA Approved GREEN mold preventor called Vital Oxide that is the perfect product to keep the mold problem at bay, states company spokesman Tom Heller. Vital Oxide is water based and completely odorless. Heller states that more information on this is available at the company website www.worldwideoxide.com