We are always looking for uses for some of our antifungal Bacillus strain research. Our library has a number of good strains, and we are always looking for more targets. The article below may provide just the application target directed to those in the construction materials business either in building or manufacturing. I believe it is important for those in the renovation and deconstruction business to take note as these molds represent certain hazards.
In the June 2011 Applied Environmental Microbiology 77:4180-4188 is an interesting article entitled, “Associations between fungal species and water damaged building material”. Here Andersen et al; studied the mold of 5300 different construction surface samples. A long list of materials were examined such as plywood, brick, wallpaper, gypsum, concrete and many more. Twenty seven genus and species of fungal species predominated across all materials with Penicillium being detected most often in 69.5% of the materials and type I allergy agent Aspergillus versicolor detected second at 26.5% of materials. Of major concern were the toxic fungi Chaetomium spp. and Stachybotrys spp, isolated in 16.5% and 3.9% of the materials respectively. While not all species are toxic, these might serve as indicators of prevalence. In my opinion the most notable part of this article is just which of these materials the possible toxic species predominate. Chaetomium spp were found on most materials, but were correlated the highest with 25% of concrete samples. Stachybotrys the Genus that contains the “black mold” toxic species, was found in 25% of gypsum when tested qualitatively but in 39% of the samples distributed quantitatively. Other noteworthy material associations was various Aspergillus species associated with concrete 20-32% of the surface samples including type I allergy causing Aspergillus versicolor.
I guess the take home message here is to be careful with all the construction materials. Wear those mold barrier masks when working on rennovations! Let us know if somehow we can combine our research library with some of your applications. www.mdgbio.com
