Indoor Air Quality Assessment By Investigation Of Airborne Fungi

Authors

  • Gayathri N Department of Biotechnology, Bhavan’s College, Munshi Nagar, Andheri (West), Mumbai 400 058
  • Kamtekar A Department of Biotechnology, Bhavan’s College, Munshi Nagar, Andheri (West), Mumbai 400 058
  • Bagkar P Department of Biotechnology, Bhavan’s College, Munshi Nagar, Andheri (West), Mumbai 400 058

Keywords:

Air borne fungi, air quality, fungal flora, Bhavan’s college

Abstract

Airborne particles are a major cause of respiratory ailments such as allergies, asthma, and pathogenic infections of the respiratory tract in man. Continued exposure to indoor airborne mold and/or mycotoxin causes many multi-system adverse human health effects. Students and teachers spend a major portion of the day in their educational institutions. The present study is aimed at isolating and identifying fungal flora in the dust samples of various indoor environments in Bhavan’s College, Andheri (West), Mumbai. The samples collected were inoculated onto Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) and Sabouraud’s agar (SAB) and incubated at room temperature for seven days. Factors such as temperature, relative humidity of the sampling site and the time of exposure were noted. Macroscopic and microscopic analyses of the colonies were carried out. The level of contamination of each site was expressed in percentage of the total number of fungal species obtained from the study. The observations indicate that the indoor fungal concentrations are highly variable as the samples collected from the chosen sampling sites harbor fungi of diverse species.  Future investigations are needed to further examine the effects of these exposures on the related health problems and to devise methods to improve the indoor air quality.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

1. Abarca M, Bragulat M, Castellá G, Cabañes F (1994) Ochratoxin A production by strains of Aspergillus niger var. niger. Appl Environ Microbiol, 60 (7): 2650-2652.

2. Al-Doory Y, Domson JM, Howard WA, Sly, RM (1980) Airborne fungi and pollens of the Washington D.C. metropolitan areas. Ann. Allergy, 45: 360-367.

3. Burge H (1992) Monitoring for airborne allergens. Ann. Allergy, 69: 9-18.

4. Chapman MD (2006) Challenges associated with indoor molds: health effects, immune response and exposure assessment. Med Mycol, 44: S29-S32.

5. Christakopoulos P, Nerinckx W, Kekos D, Macris B and Claeyssens M (1996) Purification and characterization of two low molecular mass alkaline xylanases from Fusarium oxysporum F3. J. Biotechnol, 51: 181-189.

6. Fairs A, Wardlaw AJ, Thompson JR, Pashley CH (2010) Guidelines on ambient intramural airborne fungal spores. J Investig Allergon Clin Immunol, 20 (6): 490-498.

7. Horner W, Helbling EA, Salvaggio JE, Lehrer SB (1995) Fungal allergens. Clin. Microbiol, Rev. 8: 161-179.

8. Kurup VP, Shen HD, Banerjee B (2000) Respiratory fungal allergy. Microbes infect, 2: 1101-1110.

9. Lacey J (1981) The aerobiology of conidial fungi. In biology of Conidial Fungi. Ed. G.T. Cole and Kendrick, Academic Press, New York pp. 373-415.

10. Ren P, Jankun TM, Belanger K, Bracken MB, Leaderer BP (2001) The relation between fungal propagules in indoor air and home characteristics. Allergy, 56: 419-424.

11. Rodriguez A, Perestelo F, Carnicero A, Regalado V, Perez R, De la Fuente G and Falcon MA (1996) Degradation of natural lignins and lignocellulosic substrates by soil-inhabiting fungi imperfecti. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol, 21: 213-219.

12. Shelton BG, Kirkland KH, Flanders WD, Morris GK (2002) Profiles of airborne fungi in buildings and outdoor environments in the United States. Appl Environ Microbial, 68: 1743-1753.

Downloads

Published

2013-11-30

How to Cite

Gayathri N, Kamtekar A, & Bagkar P. (2013). Indoor Air Quality Assessment By Investigation Of Airborne Fungi. International Journal of Life Sciences, 47–51. Retrieved from https://ijlsci.in/ls/index.php/home/article/view/1087

Issue

Special Issue A1 November 2013

Section

Research Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2013 Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/