MoldRANGE™ Culturable Fungi Air (CFA) Report
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MoldRANGE™ Culturable Fungi Air (CFA) Report

What Is MoldRANGE™ Culturable Fungi Air (CFA)?

MoldRANGE™ CFA is a compilation of data from thousands of outside air samples. You get statistical information about the types and amounts of fungi that are typically present in the outside air based on time of year and region of the country. It also makes it easy communicate this data to your clients.

What Does MoldRANGE™ CFA Do?

MoldRANGE™ CFA helps in many of your important tasks such as:

  • Avoid unnecessary additional remediation
  • Calm clients who are in a panic over 100 spores/m3 of Cladosporium colonies
  • Interpret data when outdoor samples had to be taken in bad weather or with snow cover

In the situations above, the MoldRANGE™ CFA report provides documentation that can help you communicate with your client by providing them with a better understanding of typical outdoor spore levels. Better documentation and improved understanding can help your client make more informed decisions based upon the best scientific data available.

Sometimes you can calm a client who is panicking about finding Cladosporium indoors when you provide unbiased third-party data showing that Cladosporium is typically present in outdoor samples from your area in quantities of hundreds or thousands of colony forming units (cfu) per cubic meter compared to low levels inside. In some cases, this little bit of extra documentation can help them, and you, avoid mistakes such unnecessary re-cleaning.

Can MoldRANGE™ CFA Replace My Normal Outdoor Air Sample?

MoldRANGE™ CFA is intended to be another useful piece of the puzzle. It was not designed to replace normal outside control(s). Weather, local vegetation and activity levels, and many other factors affect the fungal flora. Consequently, no database could replace actual samples from the project site.

How Do I Read The Report?

The report shows the data from the actual outside sample(s) taken for the project. The next two sections are 'Typical Outdoor Data by Date' and 'Typical Outdoor Data by Location.' The last column in each section is the frequency of occurrence. The other five columns, labeled "very low", "low", "medium", "high", and "very high" represent the 10, 20, 50, 80, and 90 percentile values of the fungal type when it is detected.

Close-up of MoldRANGE Culturable Fungi Air (CFA) Report

 

Outdoor Spore Levels and MoldRANGE™ CFA

As you know, outdoor mold spore counts may vary widely over relatively short time spans. Consequently, judging whether or not an indoor environment has significantly lower spore counts than outdoors can be a difficult challenge. This is true even if two outdoor samples have been taken, one at 8AM and another at 4PM, since the fungal types and concentrations recovered on these two samples may be very different. Other sampling factors may also affect your outdoor sample results, and unless you can take many outdoor samples on each sampling day, you have only limited information on actual outdoor fungal concentrations.

MoldRANGE™ CFA is designed to provide additional information to aid in interpreting limited outdoor sampling data. MoldRANGE™ CFA takes advantage of the tens of thousands of data points that we have collected from outdoor culturable air samples. All of these samples have been analyzed by our experts all of whom have college degrees in biology and have gone through intensive training, have passed statistical quality assurance programs, and pass ongoing statistical quality control tests. These data points have been collected throughout the year and in many different geographic localities.

MoldRANGE™ CFA references the data from your outdoor sample by taxon in the first column. The next two sections are summaries of our data that is most relevant for your sample. The first section is typical outdoor data by date, and the data you receive will be for the month of your sample, taken from all states. The second section lists the data summary for your state, taken across all months. The data summaries include the 10 (very low), 20 (low), 50 (med), 80 (high) and 90 (very high) percentile values when recovered, and the frequency of recovery for the spore type. For example, if the frequency of occurrence is 80% and the low value is 24, it would mean that the given colony type is detected 80% of the time and, when detected, 20% of the time it is present in levels above the detection limit and below 24 cfu/m3.

Download the Sample of MoldRANGE™ CFA Report
Sample Section of MoldRANGE Culturable Fungi Air (CFA) Report

MoldRANGE™ CFA is not a substitute for on-site outdoor samples or for your expert observations of the site. Instead, it provides additional information about typical outdoor fungal concentrations, and allows you to make more informed judgments about what your data means.

Examples of How You Might Use MoldRANGE™ CFA:

  • You have spent a long day sampling in a large building, and are concerned that your outdoor samples will be atypically low due to the weather (below zero with snow cover). Indoor spore counts are in the 200-300 range, with Cladosporium as the dominant type. One interpretation of this kind of result is that Cladosporium is growing in the building. However, you have done your usual intensive inspection and haven't found any potential fungal reservoirs. MoldRANGE™ CFA will tell you that outdoor Cladosporium levels in your area average 1100/m3 throughout the year. This means that for a good part of the year, Cladosporium levels are much higher than your indoor levels, and present the possibility that the indoor colony forming units you have found have entered during other seasons and have become re-aerosolized from settled dust. Thus, combining your own expertise with our database allows you to formulate broader and probably more accurate interpretations of your observational and sampling data.

  • You have recovered 200 Penicillium cfu/m3 in your outdoor sample near a home in which Penicillium levels are in excess of 500/m3. While 500 Penicillium counts would normally be considered high, you wonder whether or not the single outdoor sample result constitutes a reasonable estimate of the outdoor environment. MoldRANGE™ CFA tells you that, in fact, the 200 is in the upper range of Penicillium concentrations in your area, and that levels above that would be unusual. Thus, you can more confidently say that the colony counts collected indoors are likely to be from indoor sources. On the other hand, if 200 were in the low part of the Pen/Asp range for outdoors, you might seriously consider that the indoor spores were remnants from an outdoor aerosol event that occurred before or after you collected your outdoor sample. This could be especially true if, for example, the home has a citrus tree nearby, since fallen fruit usually support large Penicillium populations.

How do I receive MoldRANGE™ with my reports?

If you are a current client, please contact your Project Manager to generate this report for any specific set of data you'd like, or to set up your reporting preferences to automatically receive this report.