Why DNA Analysis for Mold and Pollen?

Indoor allergens like mold and pollen play a major role in daily comfort, sleep quality, and long-term respiratory health. Yet for decades, our ability to detect allergens indoors has hardly changed. Most people still rely on guesswork, visual inspection, or outdated tools that capture very little of what’s actually floating through the air.

DNA sequencing is transforming how we understand indoor environments—bringing scientific clarity, species-level precision, and far higher reliability than traditional testing. Boulder Blue combines high-volume air sampling with modern DNA methods to give homeowners a truly complete picture of what they’re breathing.

How Mold and Pollen Are Traditionally Detected — and Why These Methods Fall Short

Most people still rely on tools and techniques developed decades ago to detect indoor mold and pollen. These methods can provide hints, but they all suffer from major scientific limitations. Here’s why older approaches often miss the allergens that matter most.

1. Visual Inspection

Many homeowners—and even some inspectors—begin by looking for visible mold. While large colonies are easy to spot, most mold growth is:

hidden behind walls, inside insulation, or under flooring; or enters in from outdoors
not producing visible spores
too small or too dispersed to see

Pollen cannot be visually detected indoors at all. Visual inspection captures only a tiny fraction of the indoor allergen landscape.

2. Spore Traps and Microscopy

This is the most common professional method. A pump collects a very small amount of air onto a sticky slide, which a technician examines under a microscope.

The limitations are significant:

Extremely small air volume sampled — typically just 15–75 liters (0.015–0.075 m³). This is about the volume in a kitchen trash bag.
Subjective identification — analysts rely on shape and color, which vary.
Genus-level identification only — species cannot be distinguished visually leaving some uncertainty as to which species are present and whether they are allergenic or not
Fragments missed completely — mold fragments can outnumber spores by 10–100x, yet are not counted or classified.

Because the method is limited by technician skill and tiny sampling volumes, it often fails to detect intermittent or low-level allergens that still affect health.

3. Surface Swabs

Swabs collect material from one location—usually where mold is already visible. But airborne allergens are what people actually breathe, and swabs capture nothing of what is in the air. Swabs can confirm mold is present somewhere, but cannot characterize what’s circulating in the home.

4. Consumer Test Plates (Settle Plates)

These open dishes rely on particles falling out of the air. They are inexpensive, but:

Most household molds do not grow well in culture.
Slow-growing species get outcompeted and never appear.
Heavy particles settle; light airborne fragments do not.
Results depend on where the plate sits, how long it’s open, and air currents in the room (high user error).

Even when something grows, what grows is not necessarily what’s airborne.

5. Low Air Volume = Low Detection Power

All traditional methods collect only tiny snapshots of the indoor environment. Consider:

A 500-ft² room contains about 4000 ft³ (113 m³) of air.
A spore trap samples 0.5 – 2.5 ft³ (0.015–0.075 m³) of air.

That’s less than 0.1% of the room’s air, making it incredibly easy to miss meaningful allergens.

6. High User and Technician Error

Traditional methods depend heavily on:

proper pump setup
correct sampling duration
precise slide reading
proper culturing conditions

Small mistakes can dramatically alter results.

In summary:

Traditional allergen detection methods are low-volume, subjective, limited in resolution, and prone to missing key allergenic particles—especially fragments and rare species.

This sets the stage perfectly for explaining why Boulder Blue’s high-volume air sampling + DNA sequencing is a breakthrough.

What Boulder Blue Does Differently

Boulder Blue approaches allergen detection from a modern scientific standpoint:
sample enough air to capture reality, and use DNA to identify everything with precision.

1. High-Volume Air Sampling

Traditional allergen tests sample a few liters of air. Boulder Blue’s JonahAir system processes:

>36 m³ of air every hour
That’s 36,000 liters—massively more than any spore trap or settle plate.

To understand how large this is, consider a typical room:

A 500 ft² room with an 8 ft ceiling contains ~4,000 ft³, or 113 m³, of air.
In two hours, Boulder Blue samples almost two-thirds of the entire room’s air volume.

This dramatically increases the chance of capturing the allergens people are actually breathing and provides a much better estimate.

2. DNA Sequencing: The Gold Standard for Identification

Once Boulder Blue collects a large sample of airborne material, DNA sequencing reveals exactly what is present—without subjective interpretation.

Precise Species-Level Identification

Unlike microscopy, DNA sequencing can distinguish:

closely related mold species
non-sporulating fungi
damaged spores
tiny fragments that microscopes cannot classify

This means Boulder Blue identifies mold and pollen at a level that is simply not possible under a microscope.

Detects Spores, Fragments, and Hidden Growth

DNA does not require the particle to be intact. This is essential because fragments are often the most common allergenic particles in indoor air.

Repeatable and Standardized

Two DNA tests run on identical samples will produce nearly identical results. There is:

no technician subjectivity
no manual counting
no ambiguity

This makes DNA results far more reliable for tracking changes over time. Also, analyzing DNA instead of visual identification allows our lab to process many more samples than a traditional lab with someone behind a microscope. No need to cut corners to turn around results quickly.

3. Why DNA Matters for Health and Decision Making

Indoor allergens aren’t just “mold” and “pollen.” They are specific species with specific ecological preferences.

Example: Mold

Two homes may both “have Aspergillus,” but:

A. fumigatus often indicates damp dust or HVAC infiltration.
A. versicolor is associated with chronic moisture in walls.
A. penicillioides suggests dry, dusty indoor reservoirs.

Only DNA can separate these species and show what the patterns actually mean. Our basic report only results at the genus level for molds, but our recommendations take into account which species we find.

Example: Pollen

DNA can distinguish:

birch vs. oak
ragweed vs. pigweed
grass species common in lawns vs. wild

This helps identify whether pollen issues are originating locally, or from far away.

What does this all mean for you?

Traditional allergen detection methods are low-volume, subjective, limited in resolution, and prone to missing key allergenic particles—especially fragments and rare species. Boulder Blue's DNA-based system samples a large volume of air and provides precise, quantitative results.