School
School of Public Health
Document Type
Dissertation
Department (new version)
Public Health
Date of Award
1993
Degree Name by School
Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) School of Public Health
Abstract
There were six primary objectives of this study. The objectives included the determination of (1) baseline seasonal airborne fungal and bacterial levels in three normal or non-complaint office buildings in three different cities, (2) which monitored factors affect bioaerosol levels, (3) whether indoor and outdoor levels are correlated or from the same distribution, (4) median indoor/outdoor fungal ratio, (5) whether fungal genera found indoors are similar to those found outdoors, and (6) the coefficient of variation of the sampling method. A non-complaint office building was defined as one in which no employee complaints associated with indoor air quality had been reported during the previous year. Two Andersen single-stage viable microbial samplers were used to collect duplicate fungal and bacterial samples at three indoor and two outdoor sites at an office building in each city. Samples were collected on a Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of each season at each building for a total of 36 days sampled and 720 culture samples. Median indoor and outdoor bacterial levels were 40 (range 0-292) cfu/m$\sp3$ and 72 (range 2-1620) cfu/m$\sp3$, respectively. They were from different distributions (Wilcoxon signed rank test p = 0.0003) but they were correlated (Spearman rank correlation test rho = 0.39 p = 0.02). Median indoor and outdoor fungal levels were 59 (range 1-688) cfu/m$\sp3$ and 440 (range 7-$\ge$8229) cfu/m$\sp3$, respectively. They were from different distributions (p $<$ 0.0001) but they were also correlated (rho = 0.57 p = 0.0003). Poisson multiplicative regression models were developed for estimating counts of indoor bacteria, indoor fungi, outdoor bacteria, and outdoor fungi and the pseudo-R$\sp2$ of the four models were 0.63, 0.92, 0.95, and 0.97, respectively. The median indoor/outdoor fungal ratio was 0.16 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.09 to 0.19. Indoor and outdoor fungal genera from plates from all cities were very similar (rho = 0.98 p = 0.0001) to outdoor fungal genera and included Cladosporium, Penicillium, Epicoccum, Aspergillus, Curvularia, Stachybotrys, and Alternaria. Indoor and outdoor fungal genera by cities were not as similar with rho ranging from 0.72 to 0.82. Coefficients of variation of the bacterial and fungal sampling methods were 0.58 and 0.47, respectively.
ProQuest Publication Number
ProQuest ID
9325919
ISBN
979-8-207-85040-5
Recommended Citation
Holt, Grady Lynn, "Determination of seasonal indoor/outdoor fungal ratios and indoor bacterial levels in non-complaint office buildings" (1993). All ETDs from UAB. 7183.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/7183
Comments
DrPH