Something to sneeze at - UM pollen count station
Emily Weiler, left, and Kelly Crispen: stand next to the area's only certified pollen counting station on the roof of the Skaggs Building on the University of Montana campus.
BILL SCHWANKE/Missoula.com
By BILL SCHWANKE of Missoula.com
If you suffer from allergies and think you've been hit with the problem earlier this year, you're right.
It's likely because of an earlier growing season brought on by unseasonably hot weather in May.
Human allergies can be caused by all sorts of things from animal dander to pollen.
While animal dander is a pretty constant irritant, pollen can bring about watery and swollen eyes, sneezing fits and a scratchy throat - among other things - to varying degrees from one part of a year to another.
It's Kelly Crispen's job to monitor pollen levels at the relatively new certified counting station operated by the University of Montana Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
Crispen, who got her bachelor's degree at UM in aquatic wildlife biology, said she "sort of stumbled into this job" because she wanted to do science.
She came on board about a year and a half ago and actually started the pollen counting station - certified by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology - during the summer of 2006.
The sampling equipment is located on the roof of the Skaggs Center on campus.
The scientific definition of pollen reads as follows:
"Pollen is a mass of microspores in a plant appearing as a fine dust. Each individual pollen grain is a minute body of varying shape and structure that is formed in the anther, or male part, of a seed-bearing plant. Pollen grains are transported to the female, or pistil, portion of another plant of the same species by vectors such as wind, insects or water. Once the pollen grain reaches the pistil fertilization occurs and reproduction of a new plant begins."
Crispen's concern is that pollen dramatically and negatively affects thousands of humans roughly for the months of March through October. How pollen impacts a given individual can depend on genetics, the area in which a person lives, and things a person is exposed to.
"An allergy is an abnormal reaction to a pollen grain," Crispen explained, "something that gets in and disrupts your system and gets your antibodies up and inflamed."
Crispen said it was important to establish a new pollen-counting station in Missoula because the closest certified station previously was in Twin Falls, Idaho.
"That's 400 (to) 500 miles south of us and also borders the Great Basin Desert, so it has a completely different plant ecosystem than we do," Crispen explained.
"We wanted to let people know what was in a Rocky Mountain air shed," Crispen added. "(And) also as scientists we hope one day to do some pollen exposure tests just to see how they affect people and if there's any way that we can alleviate them (and) continue the allergy and asthma research by having species that are specific to the area."
Currently Crispen passes her pollen counts along weekly to Dr. Donald Gillespie, whom she described as the main local allergist.
"It's been a big help to his patients and to his secretary so she doesn't have to keep guessing what's in the air for people when they walk in," Crispen noted.
She also reports counts to the Weather Channel, which provides information to tourists planning trips to this area. Crispen also reports to KPAX-TV in Missoula which airs the information both Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.
As for the earlier-than-usual pollen onset this year Crispen at least partially blamed what she called the El Nino effect. Global warming also could be a culprit.
"Anyone who's lived in Montana for a period of time realizes that our winters have just completely declined over even the last five to 10 years," she said, "and that means that there's going to be a longer growing season and a faster-approaching pollination season as well."
Crispen and undergraduate researcher Emily Weiler - who will take over the counting station when Crispen starts graduate school at UM this fall - noticed some pollen types this year that they hadn't seen before during "that really hot 80-degrees sort of sudden week in May that no one was really expecting."
Kelly Crispen, who runs the certified pollen counting station on the University of Montana campus: shows the inside of the pollen sampler. The sampler drum turns slowly enough to allow collection of pollen samples for seven consecutive days.
BILL SCHWANKE/Missoula.com
Other things that can affect pollen seasons besides early heat are rain storms, runoff, and late or early snow.
Looking at seasonal pollen impacts Crispen said tree pollen is a major contributor in the spring. During the summer pine trees and grass are big, and in the fall weeds and grass generally take over.
People with allergies generally appreciate periods of rain or even later-than-usual snowfall because they beat pollen into the ground. But it doesn't take long for pollen to become airborne again once things begin to dry out.
Wind is interesting because it can both stir up pollen and then blow it away. It also can cause anomalies in pollen counts.
"Sometimes you'll find like a weed pollen grain in early spring and ... you know it's not pollinating at that time," Crispen said. "But it's just been blowing around in the wind or it's gotten stuck on a tree and come loose and gotten onto (our) slide."
The No. 1 trouble-maker for allergy sufferers in this area is grass. And then there's pine pollen, most noticeable as a yellow coating on mud puddles.
Toss in cottonwood, maple, alder and juniper pollen along with sagebrush in the fall and you've got plenty to keep a person's nose busy.
One thing that doesn't show up in the counts, Crispen said, is pollen from leafy spurge and knapweed. She and Dr. Gillespie believe that's because it's insect pollinated rather than wind pollinated and because it's relatively heavy and stays closer to the ground than most pollens.
"If I was to put the sampler on Mount Sentinel it would probably be covered in knapweed," Crispen said.
The on-campus sampler is designed to receive pollens that are common to the entire air shed even though there may be variations across the Missoula Valley based on specialized trees and plants homeowners might plant.
Crispen is excited that her direct supervisor, Tony Ward, and center director Andrij Holian, both supported establishment of the pollen counting station. She only wishes that more of them would be placed around the region and nation.
"Getting more certified ... stations in all different parts of the country helps greatly so you can compare and contrast different pollen levels and ... types across air sheds," Crispen said. "I think it's ... a relatively new study. I think people just dealt with it for years and didn't think there was anything they could do with it."
The point isn't to stop Mother Nature from doing her thing. The point is to better alert allergy sufferers as to what they're going to be dealing with at any given time of the year. That might facilitate the development of better medicines to treat allergies.
Crispen said it also will be interesting to see how climate change will affect pollen levels in coming years. She thinks pollination signs are a solid indicator of what's going on in our air.
The hope, Crispen said, is that ongoing research will some day lead to the development of new antihistamines that are geared to specific plants and trees.
AUDIO LINK - Click here to listen to the entire interview with Kelly Crispen.
On the Net: UM Center for Environmental Health Sciences: http://www.umt.edu/cehs/pollen_station.htm
National Allergy Bureau: http://www.aaaai.org/nab/index.cfm
