I've gotten a cold from my wife, who apparently picked it up while visiting in CA a couple months ago. Otherwise, no other colds/flu in the 10 months we've been here.
I grew up in Honolulu and, although I did get colds/flu, I never had any hayfever type allergies. After about 13 years of CA living, mostly in the Bay Area, I developed pollen allergies. They became worse over the next 20+ years. I'm happy to say that I haven't had any respiratory allergy events since moving to the BI. However, I have been getting some minor rashes on my hands and forearms. But not as bad as a case of Poison Oak. I first suspected mango skin and sap, although I never used to react to the stuff, having grown up with productive Pirie and Hayden trees in our backyard on O'ahu. I did recently try a new variety, Mapulehu, from So. Kona after which I first noticed the rash. But I've been getting short bouts of the rash with no mangoes in sight.
By the way, mango belongs to the sumac family (Anacardiaceae) which also includes Poision Oak (Rhus diversiloba) and the other Rhus genus, Poisons Ivy and Sumac. This family also includes cashew and Ginko biloba. The allergenic compound that is responsible for the rashes is urushiol. I have eaten cashew fruit as well as the nuts with no rash reactions. I guess it's the shell of the cashew nut that contains the urushiol.
It's possible that I developed an allergy to mango skin getting reactions to Poison Oak in CA. I brought back some Technu from CA (I couldn't find it in HI). It's a cleaner that specifically neutralizes urushiol. It certainly dried out the skin in the areas of inflammation.
Here's some reference pages
http://poisonivy.aesir.com/faq.html
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph9.htm
Oh, and my wife told me about a former co-worker in CA whose husband returned from India recently with a cold or flu and gave it to her. It's the human-in-airplane vector.
Les
Edited by - Les C on 11/17/2006 11:45:29