Abstract
Humans now spent most of their time indoor where they can be exposed to various aerocontaminants, among which pollen. The question of remanence of pollen grains indoor is important because allergic patients could get symptoms from these indoor pollen far away from the pollination period but the temporal relationship between both phenomenons is poorly documented. In this study, we monitored pollen counts both in house dust samples and outdoor pollen traps during the whole pollen season in Southern France and computed the influx and remanence of various pollen species throughout the pollen season. Five families living in the same street volunteered to participate. Monitoring of indoor pollen counts was performed at four occasions through sampling of house dust from the living room. During the same period, outdoor pollen counts were monitored using a Burkard pollen trap. Pollens from 73 taxa were identified on the house dust samples collected indoor. For each pollen type, indoor pollen count dynamics were consistent with the observed pollen counts in Burkard traps over the whole pollination period. Two groups of pollen types can be defined on the basis of these results: the first group includes Platanus, Quercus and Cupressaceae which exhibit high remanence and a low penetration, and the second group contains species with high penetration but various remanence. Date of sampling was the main factor affecting penetration coefficients very low in winter, to moderate in spring and huge in summer. Pollen type, housing and sampling time period have bearing on penetration and remanence of pollen grains indoor.
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This work was funded by AFSSET contract EST-2006-1-35.
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Pichot, C., Calleja, M., Penel, V. et al. Inference of the pollen penetration and remanence into dwellings using seasonal variation of indoor/outdoor pollen counts. Aerobiologia 31, 315–322 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-015-9366-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-015-9366-6