Measuring microbial growth in damp buildings: Ongoing efforts at an age-old public health problem

For over 2000 years, building dampness has been considered harmful. Through epidemiological efforts, we have established that damp or moldy building materials are linked to increased risk of respiratory problems. While this is presumably because of unhealthy microbial emissions, the specific causative agent(s) responsible for the health effects remain unknown. In order to identify damp buildings, we want to identify a consistent signature of microbial growth in buildings that can be detected among the rich microbial milieu normally present. This talk will provide a summary of the state of the field (hopefully addressing some long-standing misconceptions) and present findings on promising new strategies, including using sequence-based technologies, for identifying microbial growth in damp buildings. Current research on the moisture conditions in buildings under which microbes are active and contribute to volatile chemistry will also be presented.