This is how little pollen is causing big problems for a lot of people in Ohio this time of year (2024)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - If you weren’t aware and the people with pollen allergies haven’t already told you, the allergy season is upon us.

Tree pollen count was recorded “high” on Friday morning, with 80 grains per cubic meter of air reported by the Weather Channel, using data from the Academy of Cleveland and Northern Ohio, abbreviated as AMCNO.

Ohio joins over 30% of the country with high pollen levels right now, with a combination of outgoing tree pollen like ash, mulberry, and oak and incoming grass pollen.

How much of it is floating around causing the problems? Very little at any one point time in the air. How much one person breathes in a day is not even visible (about 1.5 to the negative ninth power inch).

For all of Cuyahoga County, it adds up to about the size of an oven - roughly one square yard - if all stacked together. Let’s explain.

Pollen is typically minuscule. The different grains of pollen range from 10 to 200 micrometers, making it practically microscopic, smaller than your average dust mite. What some people see in the air and consider pollen is not what is causing the problem.

“Those white things that float out the sky herald the grass pollen season,” says Dr. Robert W. Hostoffer from Allergy/Immunology Associates in Mayfield Heights. “The white floaty thing is just cottonwood seed. It’s not actually pollen. No one’s allergic to that.”

Some normally invisible airborne pollen can become visible when it accumulates over time on a surface like the green tree pollen on your picnic table.

Allergy/Immunology Associates is responsible for providing AMCNO with its daily pollen counts for Cleveland and the rest of Northeast Ohio.

Pollen is measured using a device called a rotorod, manufactured by healthcare technology company IQVIA. The device has two rods that rotate and collect pollen particles over 24 hours. The rods are then brought under a microscope, where the researcher counts the pollen and applies a formula that ranks the pollen level in the air each day.

Because pollen is measured by count, it is better suited for density calculations than volume calculation. Dr. Hostoffer says that while many organizations have asked for volume measurements, the rotorod doesn’t really allow for that. Other experts we contacted agreed.

So cleveland.com broke down the numbers, theorizing the amount of pollen in the air if swept together into a pile. Don’t consider this a precise estimate, but rather an exercise to show how small this irritating stuff really is.

We hope you’re paying attention. This will be on the SATs.

We calculated this based on the median size of pollen at 30 micrometers, or 30 µm, an estimate for size from the Science & Plants for Schools, an education program from Cambridge University. On Friday, Cleveland showed 80 grains of pollen per cubic meter of air or about 2,400 micrometers worth per cubic meter of air.

The next step is spreading this across Cuyahoga County’s 797,400 acres.

We’re aiming to make this simple. So based on a meter high of air across the county, we end up with 7,744,718,793,600 cubic micrometers of sneezing powder.

Or, in simpler terms, this works out to roughly a cubic yard of pollen. That’s the size of one typical kitchen oven.

Put another way, the pollen is packed together in a cube measured roughly 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet. That’s not very large for a county’s worth of air. But note, that’s at any one moment in time. What you see coating your car has been accumulating for days. Pollen is still subject to gravity.

But you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that pollen allergies are worse now than in the past. Across the country, pollen season is starting about 20 days earlier, and pollen loads are 21% higher than in 1990, according to a February 2021 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, researchers found a strong link between global warming and longer pollen seasons, resulting in worsening respiratory health.

However, your nose and throat are built to filter out unwanted particles as you breathe. It’s not foolproof, which is why a mask could be recommended to help you stop any pollen in the air from getting into your system.

Dr. Hostoffer also notes that if you have pollen allergies, know what kind you have. Currently, grass and tree pollen is running rampant, but there is higher exposure to ragweed or mold pollen at other times of the year.