ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a 2-year study of fungi in dust from 12 schools in Cordoba, Spain. Four hundred fifty-six dust samples were collected using a vacuum cleaner and were analyzed culturally for microfungi. Fungi give rise to two types of systemic infections depending on the taxa involved; the virulent pathogenic fungi cause diseases such as histoplasmosis, blastomycosis, and coccidioidomycosis, while the opportunistic pathogens especially affect immunologically suppressed individuals, where they induce aspergillosis, zygomycosis, candidiasis, and several other diseases. Most of the infectious fungi and the more thoroughly studied antigenic fungi belong to genera of the Deuteromycotina and Zygomycetes. Dust samples were collected at twelve primary education schools, of which six were public and six private. Linear regression analysis revealed no association at any sampling site between the total number of colonies and the number of common disease agents. Thirty-eight percent of the isolated colonies belonged to taxa recognized as important agents of disease.
