Pollen might be getting worse, but it’s hard to say for sure Anthony R. Wood The Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA — He found masses of pollen as thick as “oatmeal,” and once discovered that grains from palm trees had ridden the winds for hundreds of miles to reach his front porch. For 17 years, Timothy Craig intercepted the airborne gametes of trees, grasses and weeds with a whirling trap, assiduously examined the captives with a microscope, and posted his inferred daily pollen counts for the benefit of science and the allergy-tormented. Not many people are going through that much trouble these days. “It’s very labor-intensive and time-intensive,” said Craig, a professor of medicine and pediatrics in allergy and immunology at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.