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. 2019 Sep;29(5):780-790.
doi: 10.1111/ina.12567. Epub 2019 Jun 3.

Fungal aerosol composition in moldy basements

Anani K Afanou  1 , Anne Straumfors  1 , Wijnand Eduard  1
Affiliations

Fungal aerosol composition in moldy basements

Anani K Afanou et al. Indoor Air. 2019 Sep.

Abstract

Experimental aerosolization studies revealed that fungal fragments including small fragments in the submicrometer size are released from fungal cultures and have been suggested to represent an important fraction of overall fungal aerosols in indoor environments. However, their prevalence indoors and outdoors remains poorly characterized. Moldy basements were investigated for airborne fungal particles including spores, submicron fragments, and larger fragments. Particles were collected onto poly-L-lysine-coated polycarbonate filters and qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed using immunogold labeling combined with field emission scanning electron microscopy. We found that the total fungal aerosol levels including spores, submicrometer, and larger fragments in the moldy basements (median: 80 × 103 m-3 ) were not different from that estimated in control basements (63 × 103 m-3 ) and outdoor (90 × 103 m-3 ). However, mixed effect modeling of the fungal aerosol composition revealed that the fraction of fragments increased significantly in moldy basements, versus the spore fraction that increased significantly in outdoor air. These findings provide new insight on the compositional variation of mixed fungal aerosols in indoor as compared to outdoor air. Our results also suggest that further studies, aiming to investigate the role of fungal aerosols in the fungal exposure-disease relationships, should consider the mixed composition of various types of fungal particles.

Keywords: Immunogold labeling-FESEM; fungal aerosol composition; fungal fragments.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gallery of pictures from the sampling sites
Figure 2
Figure 2
Micrographs of spores (A1‐2), submicron fragments (B1‐2), and larger fragments (C1‐2). The white spots are silver enhanced nanogold particles
Figure 3
Figure 3
Bar chart of the arithmetic mean percentages of spores, submicron fragments and larger fragments in moldy indoor (I), outdoor (O), and control basements (C). Error bars represent standard deviation of each fungal particle proportion. Bars with similar letter are significantly different according to post hoc test using Mann‐Whitney, (ie, P < 0.017) for a, P = 0.005 and for b, P = 0.007
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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