Dampness and Mould - WHO guidelines for indoor air quality - PRWeb

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WHO GUIDELINES FOR INDOOR AIR QUALITY: DAMPNESS AND MOULD
published studies on selected outcomes. The review focuses on selected categories
of the outcomes included in the Institute of Medicine review (upper respiratory
tract symptoms, cough, wheeze, dyspnoea, asthma symptoms in people with
asthma, asthma development) and several additional categories (current asthma,
respiratory infections, bronchitis, wheeze, allergic rhinitis and allergy or atopy).
It excludes outcomes on which limited research has been reported (e.g. effects
related to skin, eyes, fatigue, nausea, headache, insomnia, mucous membrane irritation
and sick-building syndrome).
4.1.2 Methods
The online database PubMed was searched up to July 2007 for published articles,
by using three groups of keywords, such as: (1) dampness, damp, water damage,
moisture, humidity, fungi, fungus, mould, bacteria or microorganisms; along
with (2) health, asthma, allergy, eczema, wheeze, cough, respiratory, respiratory
infection, lung, skin, nasal, nose, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, alveolitis, bronchial,
hypersensitivity or inflammation; and with (3) building, house, home, residence,
dwelling, office, school or day-care centre. Some combinations of terms
were searched separately. References in review articles or in personal databases
were also included. Other references were added, as available.
For inclusion in this review, a study had to meet the following criteria:
publication in a peer-reviewed journal (printed or online);
reporting of original data from a study that was either an experimental intervention,
a prospective cohort, a retrospective cohort or case-control, a crosssectional
or a cross-sectional case-control study;
no minimum study size, except that if exposure was characterized only at
building level, at least 10 buildings had to be included;
it included risk factors related to dampness, fungi or microbiological components
or products, other than allergens – such as those related to dust mites,
cockroaches and mice;
it included upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough, wheeze, dyspnoea,
impaired lung function, allergy or atopy, asthma symptoms in people with
asthma, asthma development, any diagnosis of asthma, current asthma, hypersensitivity
pneumonitis, respiratory infections or bronchitis; and
it provided adequate control, through the study design or analytical strategies,
of selection bias and confounding by key variables: sex, active smoking (in
studies of adults), passive smoking (in studies of children) and socioeconomic
status (except in the Nordic countries).
Exposures and conditions that were not included were dust mites, humidity and
measurements of moisture in mattresses. Endotoxins are components of Gramnegative
bacteria that may favour moist surface conditions, but they are also