Comparison of a six-stage and a single stage viable andersen impactor (N6) for airborne microbes sampling.(Thai)

Abstract

The airborne fungal concentrations obtained from a standard six-stage viable cascade impactor and the
single last stage (N₆) from the same type of impactor were compared in two different environments, indoor
and outdoor. The results showed that the concentrations were not significantly different using a paired t-test at
α< 0.01 although the correlations between the two methods were very poor, in the range of 0.01-0.68. The
concentration range from the N₆method, however, was narrower than that from the standard method in every
run. In terms of concentration, it was found that the fungi in the indoor environment (165-167 cfu/m^₃) were
higher than in the outdoor environment (129-134 cfu/m³) and the most available genus found were Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Curvularia in order of occurrence.