Ángela Daza-Perez, Diana Martínez-Benavides and Paola A Caro-Hernández*

Ángela Daza-Perez, Grupo Microambiente Libre, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Libre Seccional Cali, Colombia

*Corresponding Author: Paola A. Caro-Hernández, Ángela Daza-Perez, Grupo Microambiente Libre, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Libre Seccional Cali, Colombia.

Received: June 31, 2018; Published: July 03, 2018

Citation: Paola A Caro-Hernández., et al. "Sick Building Syndrome and Microbiological Quality of the Air in a University in the Colombian Southwest”. Acta Scientific Microbiology 1.8 (2018).

Abstract

  Microorganisms and the biological particles they generate are involved in contamination within buildings, causing problems, like the Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). Although this syndrome has been known for decades and the WHO estimated in 1984 that over 30% of the buildings had such sickness, officially few studies have been documented. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the presence of the SBS in a university in the Colombian southwest and to learn if the microbiological quality of the air inside the buildings could be related with the presence of the syndrome. An exploratory study was conducted, which applied the modified questionnaire of the TNP 290 by the Spanish National Institute for Safety and Hygiene in the Workplace to 60 individuals. The presence of the SBS was established by calculating the prevalence of symptoms in each building. Counts of total aerobic mesophilic and fungi were conducted to determine the microbiological quality of the air and the fungal genera were identified according to their morphology. The results indicated the presence of the syndrome in both buildings evaluated, evidencing microbial counts between 200 and 2000 UFC/m³, isolating 10 fungal genera, among which we found Cladosporium sp. and Aspergillus sp. as the most frequent. The binary logistic regression showed no relation between the presence of symptoms of the SBS and the risk factors evaluated.

Keywords: Sick Building Syndrome; Indoor Air Quality; Microbial Contamination; Fungi Bioindicators of Air Quality

Copyright: © 2018 Paola A Caro-Hernández., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.