WP 6 Exposure assessment – microbial toxins and secondary metabolites
Participating partners: BOKU, ULUNDAnalytical strategies to cope with the direct (i.e. culture-independent), comprehensive, sensitive, and selective determination of microbial metabolites in house dust are not yet sufficiently developed.
Thus, objectives of WP 6 cover method development, validation, as well as analysis of real samples. Qualitative and quantitative multi-analyte methods for measurement of microbial metabolites in settled dust will be developed and the spectrum and typical concentration levels of fungal/bacterial toxins and secondary metabolites will be characterised. The prevalence of selected common indoor mold toxins in surface dust and swab samples in schools across Europe will be determined and the data of microbial metabolite occurrence in dust will be combined with data on the microbiological status in the same sample (WP 3 and 5) and health monitoring data of exposed subjects (WP 4).