Indoor environment factor · measured in spores/m³
Fungal spores
Part of: Airborne fungi
Also: spores, conidia, mould spores, fungal spore concentration
The reproductive particles fungi release into the air, typically a few micrometres across and small enough to stay aloft and to be inhaled. They are the countable form of fungal presence indoors, and they remain allergenic whether the spore is alive or dead.
What it is
A spore is how a fungus travels, and its size is what makes it an indoor air question: at a few micrometres it behaves like fine dust, staying airborne for hours, following air currents through a building and depositing in the airway rather than the nose.
Counting spores answers a different question from culturing fungi. A culture reports only what grows; a spore trap counts everything that lands on the slide, living or dead, and reports it by type. Since the allergenic proteins survive the death of the spore, and fragments smaller than whole spores also carry them, the counted total is closer to the exposure that matters for sensitisation than a plate count is.
The interpretation rule is the same as for fungi as a whole: the indoor number means something only against an outdoor sample taken at the same time.
What the studies report
| Linked to | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asthma | endpoint is doctor-diagnosed asthma or allergy, filed under asthma; null result stated without a test statistic in the sentence | children · child's bedroom | nested case-control study within the Swedish DBH study in Värmland: 198 children with asthmatic and allergic symptoms and 202 healthy controls, culturable mould spores (CFU/m3, DG-18) sampled in the child's bedroom of 382 homes, moldy odour and dampness signs observed by inspectors and reported by parents, doctor-diagnosed asthma/allergy | F-0575 Culturable mold in indoor air and its association with moist… (2010) | machine |
| Asthma | OR 1.18 (1.01–1.38) per IQR spores/m³ | preschool children · living room | cross-sectional home assessment of 120 households of preschool children from a birth cohort in the Greater Taipei Area: airborne fungal spores, endotoxin, mite allergens, indoor and outdoor pollutants measured, home characteristics surveyed, allergic diseases by questionnaire, multivariate logistic regression | F-0576 Huang Effects of indoor air quality and home environmental charact… (2023) | machine |
| Dampness and water damage | other 11,000 | returning residents and remediation workers · flooded homes (indoors) | field sampling of airborne mould spores and endotoxin in New Orleans in October-November 2005 after the hurricane flooding: continuous 5-24 hour sampling outdoors in flooded and non-flooded areas and inside homes at various levels of remediation, extrapolated to 24-hour estimates | F-0582 Valli Airborne mold and endotoxin concentrations in New Orleans, L… (2006) | machine |
| Dampness and water damage | other 645,000 | returning residents and remediation workers · flooded homes (indoors) | field sampling of airborne mould spores and endotoxin in New Orleans in October-November 2005 after the hurricane flooding: continuous 5-24 hour sampling outdoors in flooded and non-flooded areas and inside homes at various levels of remediation, extrapolated to 24-hour estimates | F-0583 Valli Airborne mold and endotoxin concentrations in New Orleans, L… (2006) | machine |
| Dampness and water damage | mean 66,167 | returning residents and remediation workers · outdoors in flooded areas | field sampling of airborne mould spores and endotoxin in New Orleans in October-November 2005 after the hurricane flooding: continuous 5-24 hour sampling outdoors in flooded and non-flooded areas and inside homes at various levels of remediation, extrapolated to 24-hour estimates | F-0584 Valli Airborne mold and endotoxin concentrations in New Orleans, L… (2006) | machine |
| Dampness and water damage | mean 33,179 | returning residents and remediation workers · outdoors in non-flooded areas | field sampling of airborne mould spores and endotoxin in New Orleans in October-November 2005 after the hurricane flooding: continuous 5-24 hour sampling outdoors in flooded and non-flooded areas and inside homes at various levels of remediation, extrapolated to 24-hour estimates | F-0585 Valli Airborne mold and endotoxin concentrations in New Orleans, L… (2006) | machine |
| — | other 755 | — · outdoors at the cave | study of airborne fungal spores in the Demanovska Ice Cave in Slovakia: culturable spores sampled at six locations inside the cave and in the outdoor air, with phenotypic and genotypic identification of the species | F-1415 Ogórek Phenotypic and genotypic diversity of airborne fungal spores… (2018) | machine |
| — | other 273 | — · show cave | study of airborne fungal spores in the Demanovska Ice Cave in Slovakia: culturable spores sampled at six locations inside the cave and in the outdoor air, with phenotypic and genotypic identification of the species | F-1416 Ogórek Phenotypic and genotypic diversity of airborne fungal spores… (2018) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D013172
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Fungal spores. Coridum Knowledge G-0133, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0133/