According to an expert, the further south one goes in Australia, the more sun exposure leads to food allergies in children.

Dr Ray Mullins, a Canberra-based allergy expert constructing a national map of the allergy’s incidence shows, a clear trend that allergies are ‘more common in the south than it is in the north’.

Mullins, according to Herald Sun told AAP: ‘We’ve now got evidence that low vitamin D levels are associated strongly with the risk of developing it’.

Exposure to sunlight is the body’s major source of vitamin D, a lack of which increases a person’s risk of multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, cancer and even schizophrenia.

Collecting data from three sources, Mullins produced the map of allergy in Australia, beginning with 36,000-children across Australia, prescribed special allergy-safe infant formula.

Locations of 69,000-children prescribed as ‘EpiPen’, emergency adrenaline to be used in case of a food allergy event were also mapped.

Over five years, locations of 11,000-cases of children rushed to hospital with an allergic reaction to food, was added.

The study showed a significant clustering in Australia’s south, even after considering factors which could skew the result e. g. differences in population and access to doctors.

When the difference between Cairns and Hobart was considered, allergy incidences were six times higher in the southern city.

‘For EpiPens, there was a six-fold difference from far north to far south. For infant formula it was three times more common (in the south) and for (hospital) admissions it was roughly two-fold,’ said Mullins.

However, he does not encourage Australians to stop wearing sunscreen, as on could obtain the required level of vitamin D, with just 20-minutes of mid-morning sun exposure.

The research detailed in two papers has been published in the journals Paediatric Allergy and Immunology and the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.