HOUSTON – If you’ve been in Texas more than five minutes, you know pollen plagues the state year-round.
Houston’s health department keeps track of how much is in the air on any given day.
Most allergens and mold can’t be seen by the human eye but sure can be felt.
KPRC 2′s Daji Aswad went to the City of Houston’s lab where they showed her how they count the irritating particles and what they look like under the microscope.
Allergy season is the entire year making it important for scientists to monitor what is floating in the air.
“We have to be at least two stories up in the air,” said Christina Utz.
Utz is a microbiologist with the Houston Health Department. She said a rooftop is the perfect place to collect spores because there are no obstructions for wind to get to their spore trap.
Utz places and collects a film from the spore trap every 24 hours, then she heads to the lab.
Staining the air sample will dye any plant material like tree or weed pollen, helping her see them more easily when looking through the microscope.
“It is very hard to identify the pollens from the molds if they are not a different color, if the pollen is different than the mold, it’s easier to know what I’m looking at,” she said.
This is a job that computers can’t do effectively. It requires a human element that can’t be replaced.
“When a computer tries to count this stuff, it is just going to count pollen that looks perfect, so if there is other stuff in the air, say there is smoke in the air, I can see that it will partially obscure that a machine is not going to be able to differentiate between junk and the actual pollen,” Utz said.
But the human element that matters the most is the help it provides.
“My allergist uses this exact count and its nice to know that I am helping people,” Utz said.