BACKGROUND Damp building-related respiratory illnesses are an important public health issue. OBJECTIVE We compared three respiratory case groups defined by questionnaire responses [200 respiratory cases, 123 of the respiratory cases who met the epidemiologic asthma definition, and 49 of the epidemiologic asthma cases who had current physician-diagnosed asthma with post-occupancy onset] to a c...

OBJECTIVES WHO's Children's Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe (CEHAPE) focuses on improvements of indoor environments where children spend most of their time. To investigate the relationship between school indoor air pollutants and cognitive performance in elementary school children, a multidisciplinary study was planned in all-day schools in Austria. MATERIALS AND METHODS In a cr...

the state of works of art exhibited inside museums can be strongly influenced by indoor air quality, due to chemical activity of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter. for that reason it is important to carry out periodic air quality controls to check if the concentration levels of air pollutants comply with the limits specified by the national laws. in this work we show results obtained in...

BACKGROUND Dampness and mould exposure have been repeatedly associated with respiratory health. However, less is known about the specific agents provoking or arresting health effects in adult populations. We aimed to assess predictors of microbial agents in mattress dust throughout Europe and to investigate associations between microbial exposures, home characteristics and respiratory health. ...

It has been just over three centuries since Antonie van Leewenhoek first conclusively documented the biological nature of the elements of air and dust in the built environment [1]. During the 20th century, advancements in sampling instrumentation and analysis techniques yielded a large literature on the microbiology of air and dust, mainly using culture and microscopy [2, 3]. In the past few de...

BACKGROUND Establishing reliable methods for assessing the microbiome within the built environment is critical for understanding the impact of biological exposures on human health. High-throughput DNA sequencing of dust samples provides valuable insights into the microbiome present in human-occupied spaces. However, the effect that different sampling methods have on the microbial community reco...

Concerns about energy consumption and climate change make residential evaporative coolers a popular alternative to central air conditioning in arid and semi-arid climates. However, evaporative coolers have been shown to significantly increase indoor relative humidity and dust mite allergen levels in some studies, while showing no association in other studies. Improved measurement of temporal fl...

BACKGROUND Recent epidemiological studies suggest that the adverse respiratory health effects caused by the inhalation of fungal propagules are substantial. Knowledge of the prevalence and environmental determinants of indoor fungal levels is essential in designing effective avoidance measures. AIM To investigate the prevalence of fungi and the influence of residential characteristics on leve...

The influence of traffic-related air pollution on indoor residential exposure is not well characterized in homes with high natural ventilation in low-income countries. Additionally, domestic allergen exposure is unknown in such populations. We conducted a pilot study of 25 homes in peri-urban Lima, Peru to estimate the effects of roadway proximity and season on residential concentrations. Indoo...