Why it's important to keep your car covered during pollen season

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- During allergy season, pollen can quickly accumulate on parked vehicles, leaving a 'taint' that can cause damage. Meteorologist Tommy House sat down with Ken Huening, who has created a successful business by inventing covers to protect automobiles and furniture.

Read an edited version of the conversation below or use the video player above to listen.

Meteorologist Tommy House: What are Cover Seal Outdoor Covers?

Ken Huening: So, Cover Seal Outdoor Covers were invented about three years ago. It’s a new type of outdoor cover which has a weighted apron. It holds them to the ground and keeps rodents, dust, pollen that we’re facing right now, insects, and any other kind of invading critter like spiders out of your protected asset, which would be cars, patios, barbecues, tractors, is another big one for us as well.

House: For those who don’t have a cover for their car, why is it important to wash it during allergy season here in Texas?

Huening: Well, pollen, which we’ve seen, creates a nice yellow film on your car. It’s actually very alkaline, and when you combine it with moisture from the dew in the morning, it creates a bit of an acid layer on your car, and that will etch into your paint. Worse, it actually etches into your chrome, and further, it can get into your air filters in your car. That creates a nice little allergy ball that gets to recirculate into the interior of your car.

House: What kind of damage can pollen that lasts for too long on your car create?

Huening: Well, it creates stains. It creates discoloration in your paint. It can gum up things like your windshield washer fluid dispensers. It turns into a kind of real nasty paste when you get it as thick as we are here in North Carolina right now.

House: What are some tips that you can share about how people can clean their car on a more regular basis?

Huening: Okay, a normal routine maintenance would be to start off your season with washing your car and waxing it. So, if you wax it, it’ll keep the pollen from adhering to the surface of your car, and it’ll be easier to take off, and it has less of a chance to etch your paint. Washing your car routinely after that really depends on how much pollen you get on that car. But a trick is, don’t park very close to trees, if you can help it. That is really the source of where a lot of the pollen comes from, and it also helps you from getting droppings onto your car from birds that sit in the same tree. So, birds are also, in the spring, a lot more active.