Prevalence and concentrations of culturable airborne fungal spores in 86 buildings from the building assessment survey and evaluation (BASE) study

Abstract

Fungi were measured in indoor and outdoor air in 86 randomly selected, public and private office buildings in ten climatic regions in the continental United States as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Building Assessment and Survey Evaluation (BASE) study. The purpose of the BASE study is to characterize many of the parameters associated with indoor environmental quality in public and private office buildings. Over 2,000 time-integrated air samples for fungi were collected during winter and summer. The buildings were randomly selected without regard to indoor air quality concerns, except that buildings with high profile indoor air quality issues were excluded. For each building, samples were collected at three indoor locations and one outdoor location. Thirty genera of figi were detected indoors and 28 outdoors. The five most commonly found fungal groups or taxa were the same for both indoor and outdoor samples. In rank order, based upon the frequency of detection in a building were: Non-sporulating; Cladosporium; Penicillium; Yeast; and Aspergi21us. These data can serve as a valuable resource for comparison in other indoor air quality investigations. The dab are also available for researchers and other interestedparties and for use by healthresearchersand policy makers.