Objectives: This study was performed in order to determine airborne fungi levels in homes and find related factors that may affect airborne fungi concentration.Methods: Fifty homes were study subjects for measuring airborne fungi. For sampling airborne fungi, the impaction method on agar plates was used and samples were counted as colony forming units per cubic meter of air (CFU/m 3 ). In addition, information regarding housing characteristics and atopic disease in each home were collected via questionnaire.
Results:The geometric means (GM) of airborne fungi concentrations in fifty living rooms and bedrooms were 68.03 and 62.93 CFU/m 3 , respectively. The GM of airborne fungi concentration in atopy homes was 78.42 CFU/m 3 . This was higher than non-atopy homes' 54.34 CFU/m 3 (p-value=0.051). In the results of the multiple regression analysis, outdoor airborne fungal concentration proved a strong effective factor on indoor airborne fungal concentration. Also, construction year, floor area of house, indoor smoking and frequency of ventilation were factors that showed a significant association with indoor airborne fungi concentration.
Conclusions:The results of this study show that some housing and living characteristics may affect the development and increase of airborne fungi. In addition, exposure to airborne fungi may be a risk factor for the prevalence of childhood atopic diseases.
Objectives: The method of analyzing urinary arsenic by flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry (FI-HG-AAS) is generally used because it shows relatively greater sensitivity, low detection limits, low blocking action, and is simple to operate. In this study, the results of analysis according to three pre-reductants commonly used in the FI-HG-AAS method were compared with each other.
Methods:To analyze urinary arsenic, nineteen urine samples were collected from adults aged 43-79 years old without occupational arsenic exposure. Analysis equipment was FI-HG-AAS (AAnalyst 800/FIAS 400, Perkin-Elmer Inc., USA). The three pre-reductants were potassium iodide (KI/AA), C3H7NO2S (L-cysteine), and a mixture of KI/AA and L-cysteine (KI/AA&L-cysteine).Results: In the results of the analysis, the recovery rate of the method using KI/AA was 82.3%, 95.7% for Lcysteine, and 123.5% for KI/AA and L-cysteine combined. When compared with the results by use of high performance liquid chromatography inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS), the method using L-cysteine was the closest to those using HPLC-ICP-MS (98.57 µg/L for HPLC-ICP-MS; 74.96 µg/L for L-cysteine; 69.23 µg/L for KI/AA and L-cysteine; 13.06 µg/L for KI/AA) and were significantly correlated (R2=0.882). In addition, they showed the lowest coefficient of variation in the results between two laboratories that applied the same method.
Conclusion:The efficiency of hydride generation is considered highly important to the analysis of urinary arsenic via FI-HG-AAS. This study suggests that using L-cysteine as a pre-reductant may be suitable and the most rational among the FI-Hg-AAS methods using pre-reductants.
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