Biodiversity and concentration of airborne fungi in a hospital environment

The biodiversity and concentration of airborne fungi were monitored over a period of 6 months in a special-care unit of a hospital. Air sampling was performed in a corridor that was also accessible to visitors and in an adjacent bone-marrow transplantation (BMT) unit using an air sampler and two isolation media. Altogether, 98 fungal species could be identified, among them Aspergillus fumigatus and A. terreus as well as 48 other species reported as potential pathogens. The average contamination values of the corridor air ranged from 124 to 485 cfu m-3. Neither the degree of fungal air contamination nor the species composition inside the special care unit differed from those found in the corridor. By means of data obtained with a light-activated sensor, a possible influence of human activities on diurnal changes of fungal propagule concentration was shown.