Behavior of the Cultivable Airborne Mycobiota in Air-Conditioned Environments of Three Havanan Archives, Cuba

Abstract

High concentrations of environmental fungi in the archives repositories are dangerous for the documents preserved in those places and for the workers' health. The aims of this work were to evaluate the behavior of the fungal concentration and diversity in the indoor air of repositories of 3 archives located in Havana, Cuba, and to demonstrate the potential risk that these taxa represent for the documentary heritage preserved in these institutions. The indoor and outdoor environments were sampled with a biocollector. From the I/O ratios, it was evident that two of the studied archives were not contaminated, while one of them did show contamination despite having temperature and relative humidity values very similar to the other two. Aspergillus, Penicillium and Cladosporium were the predominant genera in the indoor environments. New finds for archival environments were the genera Harposporium and Scolecobasidium. The principal species classified ecologically as abundant were C. cladosporioides and P. citrinum. They are known as opportunistic pathogenic fungi. All the analyzed taxa excreted acids, the most of them degraded cellulose, starch and gelatin while about 48% excreted different pigments. But 33% of them showed the highest biodeteriogenic potential, evidencing that they are the most dangerous for the documentary collections.