Hygiene Hypothesis - Alternative Hypotheses

Alternative Hypotheses

There are many other hypotheses which aim to explain the increase in allergies in developed nations, many of which are also related to the other. A few other major areas of focus in the literature include infant feeding, over-exposure to certain allergens and exposure to certain pollutants. Infant feeding covers a range of topics which include whether babies are breast fed or not and for how long, when they are introduced to solid foods and the type of these foods, whether they are given cow's milk and even the types of processing that the milk undergoes. Numerous articles have reported that over-exposure to certain allergens in occupational situations can cause allergic diseases, such as Laboratory animal allergy, bird lung, farmer's lung, and bakers lung (See Wheat allergy). The third of these theories suggests that pollution (such as diesel exhaust) might be responsible for the increase of these diseases; however, some also claim that developed nations have also been becoming cleaner, and much more so than in the bleak Dickensian years of the early industrial revolution.

For immunological conditions related to Strachan's original version of the hygiene hypothesis, such as atopy and asthma, the pool chlorine hypothesis was proposed by Albert Bernard and his colleagues as an alternative hypothesis based on epidemiological evidence in 2003.