Allergies Driving Researchers Up Trees

All Karl White could get with his degree in biology was a job climbing trees to collect plants.

But the job happened to be for a company pioneering in allergy work in the middle of hay-fever country, and now other people are climbing trees for him.

His Crystal Labs supplies 40% of the powdered mold, pollen and other allergy villains purchased by labs that make allergy tests and vaccines.

“Oklahoma is really the center point of all hay fever,” White said. Within 500 miles are deserts, trees, hills and mountains, not to mention the Johnson grass and ragweed that flourish in the state itself.

The location may be perfect and the business lucrative, but White said it is also federally regulated, highly seasonal and workers can face some unexpected hazards when they venture into the wild collecting specimens.

White, who has degrees in biology and chemistry from Central State University, began his career climbing trees to collect plants for the former Stemen Laboratory of Oklahoma City, one of three labs started in the late 1920s to produce mold and pollen powders.

“I was making minimum wage. I was very disappointed in biology because you couldn’t get a job in biology.”

Started Own Business

He eventually started his own business in Edmond. Now relocated to Luther, it produces up to 1,100 pounds a year of powder from pollen, mold, animal skin, insects and food. His most expensive product is mites, a major part of house dust; the tiny bugs crushed into pure powder sell for about $3,000 an ounce.

Individual components of household dust will be in increasing demand, White said, because the Food and Drug Administration is moving to halt the use of the mixtures in which the components are not exactly known, and to make vaccines specific to each component.

The FDA three years ago halted the use of a household insect mixture, he said, adding that he expects similar action on dust within the next three to five years, depending on the availability of individual components.

Mold can be grown all year in the lab, but plants have to be collected for pollen at just the right time--just before the pollen is released. The season begins in February with elms and runs through October’s goldenrod.

Busiest Time for Crew

That’s the busiest time for White’s five employees and 20 contractors. “I might pull the secretary out and have her go clip too,” he said.

The work can have more complications than just climbing. Well-meaning citizens see people collect plants and assume they are doing something illegal. White says his crews have been arrested before they can persuade lawmen they are after legal flora.

“The most dangerous animal I have run into was humans,” he said. “Almost every time we go out and start collecting someone turns me in thinking I’m trying to collect marijuana.”