John will explore and explain the particulate content of the air we breathe and will set up a demonstration to look at the air from the front yard of the McCrone Institute using a Zefon slit sampler and microscope with a video camera. You will be invited to enter the microscopic world of the spores of wood decay fungi, plant pathogens, leaf mold, building mold, and a few more of the potential 50,000 airborne spores of the world. John will also discuss lives and travels fungi and spores. We’ll have a good time.

Bio Sketch
John Haines is retired from the New York State Biological Survey after 34 years as state mycologist. Dr Haines was mentored in science and natural history at the University of Washington and Oregon State University before moving to Albany, New York. From the first, he was “invited” by his new boss, Eugene Ogden, a renowned palenologist, to work on airborne fungus spores, an endeavor that became increasingly more passionate. By the 1990’s when mold in homes and after flood damage came to the forefront of the news, John was engaged in research on building molds, molds associated with asthma, and fungi in the composing process. John has participated in teaching the mycology classes at McCrone for the last few years after being invited by his friend John Shane. Haines has taught mycology at Union and Russell-Sage colleges and has run numerous training courses on spore identification in New York, the US, and around the world.