Dr. Benjamín Bolaños-Rosero recognized by the AAAAI for 26 years of daily pollen and spore counts in Puerto Rico
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and its National Allergy Bureau have recognized RIPLRT collaborator Dr. Benjamín Bolaños-Rosero (UPR Medical Sciences Campus) for more than 26 years of daily fungal spore and pollen reporting in Puerto Rico.
The RIPLRT Institute congratulates our collaborator Dr. Benjamín Bolaños-Rosero, Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, Medical Sciences Campus. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) and its National Allergy Bureau™ (NAB) have recognized him for more than 26 years of daily fungal spore and pollen reporting in Puerto Rico.
The NAB is the AAAAI network that sets quality standards for pollen and spore identification and publishes certified counts for allergy patients, clinicians, and researchers. Dr. Bolaños-Rosero has been an officially sponsored, NAB-certified counter since September 2004. His San Juan and Caguas stations are the only NAB-certified pollen and fungal-spore stations in the Caribbean basin. For people with allergies and asthma in Puerto Rico, his reports are the island’s reference for what is in the air. This matters most in the rainy months, when basidiospores and ascospores reach levels rarely seen on the mainland.
Sharing the news on his outreach page, Hongos y Salud Respiratoria Puerto Rico, he wrote:
“Qué gusto me da recibir el reconocimiento que me otorga la Academia Americana de Alergia, Asma e Inmunología… por llevar más de 26 años reportando diariamente los niveles de esporas de hongos y polen en Puerto Rico. Nunca pensé alcanzar esta meta. Me ha dado mucho placer servirles durante tantos años.”
(“It is a great pleasure to receive this recognition from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology for more than 26 years of reporting the daily levels of fungal spores and pollen in Puerto Rico. I never thought I would reach this milestone. It has been a joy to serve you for so many years.”)
A quarter century of daily counts is a rare long-term aerobiological record for the Caribbean. His laboratory has used it to link high outdoor spore levels to asthma emergency visits and hospitalizations, and much of the RIPLRT’s exposure science rests on it. Together with Dr. Bolaños-Rosero, the Institute has used these counts to:
- study COVID-19 susceptibility during the fungal spore season in San Juan and Caguas,
- test spores as a 1–2-week leading indicator of respiratory-virus surges.
The same data led to our open-source R package SporeLag. We also joined him on the NAB’s review of aeroallergen monitoring in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice and on the post-Hurricane María studies of indoor fungal exposure. RIPLRT fellows, including Xaymara Hernández-González, have trained in his Mycology Laboratory along the way.
Steady, unglamorous measurement made every day for decades is what makes this kind of science possible. ¡Felicidades, Benjamín!