Fungi are found throughout the environment, including the air. Outdoors, there is about one fungal spore per liter and we breathe ca. 11,000 liters of air each day. Outdoors, therefore, you breathe in ca. 11,000 spores each day. Buildings reduce the amount of fungi and, in a well-constructed and maintained building, you would breathe in only ca. 1,100 spores/day. In a water damaged building, where fungi grow on wall board, paper, paint, glue, caulk and wood, the concentration of spores can rise by 10- to 100-fold or more. In these buildings, you could breathe in 110,000 or more spores/day. Our research on the assemblages of fungi indoors and outdoors began with well-maintained homes where we found that the fungi in indoor air are one-tenth as numerous, but the same species, as those outside (Adams, et al. 2013). Subsequent studies using experimental chambers showed how fungi enter buildings through ventilation and how we bring fungi indoors on our shoes and clothing (Adams, et al. 2015). We have begun to study homes where maintenance has been neglected. Here, where water damage has occurred, assemblages of fungi are distinct from those in undamaged units (Sylvain, et al. 2019). We think that our approach can be used to identify homes suffering from water damage by simply testing indoor air.
Publications on indoor air
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Sylvain IA, Adams RI, Taylor JW (2019) A different suite: The assemblage of distinct fungal communities in water-damaged units of a poorly-maintained public housing building. PLOS ONE 14(3): e0213355. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213355
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Adams, R. I., Lymperopoulou, D. S., Misztal, P. K., Pessotti, R. D., Behie, S. W., Tian, Y. L., Goldstein, A. H., Lindow, S. E., Nazaroff, W. W., Taylor, J. W., Traxler, M. F., Bruns, T. D., 2017. Microbes and associated soluble and volatile chemicals on periodically wet household surfaces. Microbiome. 5, Article number 128, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-017-0347-6
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Adams, Rachel I., Yilin Tian, John W. Taylor, Thomas D. Bruns, Anne Hyvärinen, Martin Täubel. 2015. Passive dust collectors for assessing airborne microbial material. Microbiome 3(1):46. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-015-0112-7.
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Adams, Rachel I., Seema Bhangar, Wilmer Pasut, Edward A. Arens , John W. Taylor, Steven E. Lindow, William W. Nazaroff, Thomas D. Bruns. 2015. Chamber Bioaerosol Study: Outdoor Air and Human Occupants as Sources of Indoor Airborne Microbes. PLoS ONE 10(5):e0128022. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128022
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Adams, R. I., Miletto, M., Lindow, S. E., Taylor, J. W., Bruns, T. D., 2013b. Airborne bacterial communities in residences: Similarities and differences with fungi. Plos One. 9: e91283. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091283
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Adams, R. I., Miletto, M., Taylor, J. W., Bruns, T. D., 2013b. The Diversity and Distribution of Fungi on Residential Surfaces. Plos One. 8(11) e78866. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078866
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Adams, R.I., Amend, A.S., Taylor, J.W., Bruns, T.D. 2013. A unique signal distorts the perception of species richness and composition in high-throughput sequencing surveys of microbial communities: A case study of fungi in indoor dust. Microbial. Ecol. 66:735-741 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-013-0266-4.
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Adams RI, Miletto M, Taylor JW, Bruns TD. 2013. Dispersal in microbes: fungi in indoor air are dominated by outdoor air and show dispersal limitation at short distances. ISME J 7:1262-1273, 21 February 2013; https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2013.28