Even a mayoral candidate can be quieted by the itch and burn of pollen season. Last Wednesday, Fernando Ferrer started a morning press briefing by saying, “I hope you’ll excuse me for the raspiness in my voice. The last few days have been high pollen days, and, um [cough],so I’m sort of struggling with it.”

It’s just going to get worse. Most of this week, the tree-pollen level should reach well into the “high warning” range, with levels in the city among the most elevated in America, experts said yesterday. Soon, plant pollen will be added to the mix, aggravating the problem.

“Tree pollen is what’s driving everyone crazy the past week,” a pharmacist, Alan Solman, said. The blooming of the maple, cherry, and magnolia trees, and the forsythia this month “is just the beginning of it,” Mr. Solman, who works at King’s Pharmacy at TriBeCa, said.

“Last year,” he said, “we saw several people a day literally crying. You don’t know if they have allergies or if they came from a funeral.”

Contact with pollen, an allergen, can cause histamine and other chemicals to be released, igniting the familiar symptoms such as itching, sneezing, a runny nose, and tearing eyes.

One sufferer, Joe Pinlac, 34, knows from experience that his seasonal allergies are just in the beginning stages.

“It’s not that bad, but I feel my eyes itching,” he said. “Normally, I feel my eyes blazing, watering eyes. I wake up with lots of mucous, sometimes even bloody.”

The plethora of pollutants and allergens, from cockroaches, mice, and dust mites to irritants in the air, make allergy season here worse than in other places.

While there are various theories as to what makes a bad allergy year, according to a clinical professor in the division of allergies at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, David Resnick, a probable cause this year is the winter’s heavy snowfall. Melting snow made for particularly fertile ground for trees, he said.

“So far it’s pretty bad, it’s a pretty significant year,” Dr. Resnick said.

And it’s going to get worse, with grass pollen coming out in about two weeks. “When they overlap,” he said, “that’s when the worst time is.”

To combat allergies, over-the-counter remedies are available, he said, such as the antihistamine loratidine. Someone with “any significant allergies” should consult a physician, who may write a prescription for a topical inhaled steroid, Dr. Resnick said.

Also, a sufferer should sleep with windows closed and air conditioning on, and remain indoors in the morning hours, when the pollen count tends to be higher, may also help.