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KMID : 1039220180280040382
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Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
2018 Volume.28 No. 4 p.382 ~ p.392
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Evaluation of Indoor Mold Exposure Level in dwelling Using DNA-Based Mold Assessment Method
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Hwang Eun-Seol
Seo Sung-Chul
LeeJu-Yeong
Ryu Jung-Min
Kwon Myung-Hee
Chung Hyen-Mi
Cho Yong-Min
Lee Jeong-Sub
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Abstract
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Objective: Allergic diseases such as asthma due to fungal exposure in houses have increased, and proper management is urgent. Mold can grow in the air, floor, walls, and other areas according to environmental conditions, and there are many limitations to the conventional methodology for examining fungal exposure. For this reason, the degree of fungal contamination is being evaluated by ERMI (Environmental Relative Moldiness Index), a quantitative analysis method proposed by the EPA. In this study, we compared ERMI values ??between water-damaged dwellings and non-damaged ones to evaluate the effectiveness of Korean ERMI values. We also explored the association of ERMI values with the level of airborne mold and characteristics of dwellings.
Methods: Floor dust was collected after installing a Dustream collector on the suction port of a vacuum cleaner. The collected samples were filtered to remove only 5 mg of dust, and DNA was extracted using the FastDNA SPIN KIT protocol.
Results: The ERMI values were found to be 19.6 (-6.9-58.8) for flooded houses, 7.5 (-29.2-48.3) for leaks/condensation, and 0.8 (-29.2-37.9) for non-damaged dwellings. The airborne concentration of mold for flooded, leakage or condensed, and non-damaged houses were 684 CFU/㎥, 566 CFU/㎥, and 378 CFU/㎥, respectively. The correlation between ERMI values and the levels of airborne mold was low (R = 0.038), but a weakly significant association of the ERMI values with the concentration of particulate matter (PM10) was observed as well(R=0.231,P<0.05).
Conclusions: Our findings show that the reference value using ERMI can be used to distinguish water-damaged and non-damaged dwellings. It is believed that ERMI values could be a promising tool for assessing long-term fungal exposure in dwellings.
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KEYWORD
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Airborne mold , condensation , ERMI (Environmental Relative Moldiness Index) , floor dust , water damage
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