Indoor air microbiological evaluation of offices, hospitals, industries, and shopping centers

In this study it was compared the MAS-100 and the Andersen air samplers' performances and a similar trend in both instruments was observed. It was also evaluated the microbial contamination levels in 3060 samples of offices, hospitals, industries, and shopping centers, in the period of 1998 to 2002, in Rio de Janeiro city. Considering each environment, 94.3 to 99.4% of the samples were the allowed limit in Brazil (750 CFU/m(3)). The industries' results showed more important similarity among fungi and total heterotrophs distributions, with the majority of the results between zero and 100 CFU/m(3). The offices' results showed dispersion around 300 CFU/m(3). The hospitals' results presented the same trend, with an average of 200 CFU/m(3). Shopping centers' environments showed an average of 300 CFU/m(3) for fungi, but presented a larger dispersion pattern for the total heterotrophs, with the highest average (1000 CFU/m(3)). It was also investigated the correlation of the sampling period with the number of airborne microorganisms and with the environmental parameters (temperature and air humidity) through the principal components analysis. All indoor air samples distributions were very similar The temperature and air humidity had no significant influence on the samples dispersion patterns.