Sampling and Characterization of the Environmental Fungi in the Provincial Historic Archive of Pinar Del Río, Cuba

Abstract

It has been reported that there is a correlation between indoor airborne fungi and the biodeterioration of valuable documents in archives, libraries and museums, and that these fungi can also cause effects on human health if there are immunological problems or the time of exposure to these environments of low quality is long. The aims of this study were quantifying and characterizing the mycobiota of the indoor air in three repositories of the Provincial Historical Archive of Pinar del Río, Cuba and assessing its impact on the human health. The samplings were made in two different months corresponding to the years 2016 and 2017, one belonging to the rainy season and the other to the season of the little rain using a SAS biocollector and appropriate culture media to isolate fungi. The fungal concentrations and the Indoor/Outdoor (I/O) ratios obtained revealing that the repositories showed good quality environments. In both isolations Cladosporium was the predominant genus followed by Penicillium in the first sampling and Fusarium in the second isolation. The genera Aureobasidium, Sepedonium, Trichaegum and Wallemia were new findings for the Cuban archives. The pathogenic attributes studied showed that 30% of the isolates have spores so small that they can penetrate into the respiratory tract into the alveoli; 10.7% of the taxa obtained in the first isolation and 13.3% of the taxa detected in the second sampling also showed positive results to four virulence tests analyzed “In vitro” (growth at 37°C, hemolytic activity, phospholipase activity and respiratory tract level to which the spores can penetrate). These virulence factors (pathogenic attributes) evidence the risk that environmental fungi represent for the health of personnel in this archive.