TY - JOUR
T1 - Electrostatic dust cloth
T2 - a useful passive sampling method when assessing exposure to fungi demonstrated in studies developed in Portugal (2018–2021)
AU - Viegas, Carla
AU - Dias, Marta
AU - Viegas, Susana
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by FCT?Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnologia, I.P. (Portugal) for funding both the PhD Grant UI/BD/151431/2021 and the EEA Grants Project ?EXPO-Green FBR_OC1_38?, and Instituto Polit?cnico de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal for funding the Project ?Occupational exposure of ambulance drivers to bioburden? (IPL/2020/BIO-AmbuDrivers_ESTeSL).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - Electrostatic dust cloths (EDC) have been widely used for microbiologic contamination assessment in different indoor and occupational environments. This paper reviews sixteen studies performed in Portugal between 2018 and 2021 for evaluating the exposure to microbiological agents and focusing on fungi using EDC as a passive sampling method. The findings suggest that EDC can be applied as a screening method for particulate matter-exposure assessment and as a complementary method to characterize microbial exposures in occupational environments. Overall, EDC should be included, side by side with other sampling methods, in sampling campaigns focused on exposure assessments due to the advantages such as the straightforward extraction protocol favoring the employment of different assays, which allows us to assess exposure to a wide range of microbial agents, and presents higher accuracy regarding the fungal diversity.
AB - Electrostatic dust cloths (EDC) have been widely used for microbiologic contamination assessment in different indoor and occupational environments. This paper reviews sixteen studies performed in Portugal between 2018 and 2021 for evaluating the exposure to microbiological agents and focusing on fungi using EDC as a passive sampling method. The findings suggest that EDC can be applied as a screening method for particulate matter-exposure assessment and as a complementary method to characterize microbial exposures in occupational environments. Overall, EDC should be included, side by side with other sampling methods, in sampling campaigns focused on exposure assessments due to the advantages such as the straightforward extraction protocol favoring the employment of different assays, which allows us to assess exposure to a wide range of microbial agents, and presents higher accuracy regarding the fungal diversity.
KW - EDC
KW - indoor environments
KW - microbiological contamination
KW - occupational exposure assessments
KW - passive sampling method
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127008673&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/pathogens11030345
DO - 10.3390/pathogens11030345
M3 - Review article
C2 - 35335669
AN - SCOPUS:85127008673
SN - 2076-0817
VL - 11
JO - Pathogens
JF - Pathogens
IS - 3
M1 - 345
ER -