Determination of mold and fungal metabolite prevalence in buildings
Abstract
Mold infestation of damp and water-damaged buildings, e.g. caused by flooding, plumbing leakage or inadequate airing, amounts to a substantial problem in many regions of the world. Living/working in mold-affected environments is a recognised risk factor for health. Yet, clarifying the role of fungal metabolite exposure in the aetiology of indoor environment-related diseases and thus valid risk assessment is impaired by the lack of knowledge on qualitative and quantitative indoor mold metabolite prevalence in exposure-relevant matrices. We herein aim at providing technical solutions for the current methodological constraints in the analysis of indoor mold metabolites. Liquid chromatography hyphenated with multi-stage and high-resolution mass spectrometry will be employed to identify in a comprehensive fashion mold metabolites in samples obtained from affected houses in Austria and Finland, i.e. (1) cultures of isolated molds, (2) naturally infested building materials, (3) dust. Complemented by mold identification down to species level, profiling of mold metabolite patterns will shed light on potential correlations metabolite vs. fungal status. For quantification, a liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry "multimethod" (simultaneous determination of a large number of fungal metabolites) featuring miniaturised sample preparation will be developed. For this purpose, metabolite reference materials and internal standards will be isolated in high purities from large-scale production strain cultures. Together with thorough validation of on-site sampling and the whole analytical procedure (focus on dust), the basis for later commercialisation of this analytical method as well as certified calibrants will be formed.
keywords Indoor mold Liquid chromatography Mass spectrometry Metabolites Analysis
Publikationen
Project staff
Michael Sulyok
Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Michael Sulyok
michael.sulyok@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-97312
Project Leader
01.10.2007 - 30.09.2011
BOKU partners
External partners
Biopure Referenzsubstanzen GmbH
none
partner
Quantas Analytik GmbH
none
partner