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Assessment of airborne bioaerosols in korean apartment houses

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Abstract

The qualitative and quantitative measurement of airborne fungi and bacteria in indoor and outdoor air samples has been performed. The concentration level was specific to age of apartment, type of air pollutants, indoor/outdoor type and room type, considering only mean values calculated. When floating microorganisms and precipitating microorganisms were monitored, demonstrating that apartments less than 4 years old (ALT4) showed a 2- to 3-fold lower Indoor/Outdoor (I/O) ratio than apartments more than 4 years old (AMT4) for both floating and precipitating microorganisms. Thereby, high I/O ratio validated that indoor source was high and immediate further investigations were required to improve the indoor air quality of AMT4 apartments. Conclusively, this study provided a monitoring technique and a strategy to develop guidelines to prevent and solve indoor air quality problems in apartment houses. However, it was difficult to evaluate statistical quality of data, as standard deviations (SD) were even higher than mean values or overlapped due to small sample size.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Science, College of Natural Science, Soonchunhyang University, Chungcheongnam-do, Korea

    Hye Li Jeon, Tea Jin Cho, Dong Ha Ji, Eun Ju Hong & Bu Soon Son

  2. Department of Health Science, School of Natural Science, Dongduk Women’s University, Seongbuk-gu, 23-1 Wolgok-dong, Seoul, Korea

    Jae Hyoun Kim

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  1. Hye Li Jeon
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  2. Jae Hyoun Kim
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  3. Tea Jin Cho
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  4. Dong Ha Ji
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  5. Eun Ju Hong
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Correspondence to Bu Soon Son.

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Jeon, H.L., Kim, J.H., Cho, T.J. et al. Assessment of airborne bioaerosols in korean apartment houses. Toxicol. Environ. Health. Sci. 2, 268–273 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03217493

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03217493

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