AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Real-Time Characterization of Fungal Aerosol
Sampo Saari, Jacob Mensah-Attipoe, Anniina Hellsten, Pertti Pasanen, TIINA REPONEN, Jorma Keskinen, Tampere University of Technology
Abstract Number: 172 Working Group: Bioaerosols: Characterization and Environmental Impact
Abstract Airborne fungal material can cause various health effects for humans and animals both in indoor and outdoor environments. Typically airborne fungal material consists of large spores, but sometimes there are also smaller particles, called fragments. Sub-micrometre fungal fragments may have stronger adverse effects than fungal spores because they can penetrate and deposit deeper into the respiratory tract. Fungal emission can be dynamic and depends on several factors, including air velocity, relative humidity, temperature, growth medium, fungal species, ventilation, human activity and the age of mould growth. Laser induced fluorescence (LIF) is a potential real-time method to detect bioaerosols and distinguish them from non-biological particles. The LIF is an effective technique for detecting biological molecules such as tryptophan, NADH and flavins that are present in microbial cells. In our previous study, we demonstrated that bacterial and fungal spores may be distinguished through the dissimilar fluorescence spectra. The results indicate also that NADH concentration is low both in bacterial and fungal spores. In this study, we used two LIF based real-time instruments BioScout (Environics Oy) and UV-APS (TSI, Inc.) to observe the release of fungal spore and to study their fluorescence properties. We used a dry generation device called the Fungal Spore Source Strength Tester (FSSST) to release fungal particles. We studied effects of flow rate, fungal species, growth medium and age of the culture on the release process and the size distribution of fungal particles. The results show that release of both fungal spores and fragments increased with higher air velocity. There were significant variations in the concentrations and size distributions of released fungal particles between the species and the age of the culture. The LIF based real-time instrument may be a potential tool to analyse fungal spore emission sources in both indoor and outdoor environments.