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    Review of 'Mind the gap between non-activated (non-aggressive) and activated (aggressive) indoor fungal testing: impact of pre-sampling environmental settings on indoor air readings'

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    Mind the gap between non-activated (non-aggressive) and activated (aggressive) indoor fungal testing: impact of pre-sampling environmental settings on indoor air readingsCrossref
    The paper has been updated well and could now be published
    Average rating:
        Rated 4.5 of 5.
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        Rated 4 of 5.
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        Rated 4 of 5.
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        Rated 5 of 5.
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        Rated 4 of 5.
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    Reviewed article

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    Mind the gap between non-activated (non-aggressive) and activated (aggressive) indoor fungal testing: impact of pre-sampling environmental settings on indoor air readings

    Indoor fungal testing has been within the researchers’ scope of interest for more than a century. Various sampling and analysis techniques have been developed over the years, but no testing protocol has been yet standardised and widely accepted by the research and practitioner communities. The enormous diversity in fungal taxa within buildings with varied biological properties, and implications on the health and wellbeing of the occupants and the building fabric complicates the decision-making process for selecting an appropriate testing protocol. This study aims to present a critical review of non-activated and activated approaches to indoor testing, with an emphasis on the preparation of the indoor environment prior to sampling. The study demonstrates the differences in the outcomes of non-activated and activated testing through a set of experimental work in idealised conditions and a case study. The findings suggest that larger particles are particularly sensitive to the sampling height and activation, and that non-activated protocols, despite dominating the current literature, can significantly underestimate the fungal biomass and species richness. Therefore, this paper calls for better-defined and activated protocols that can enhance robustness and reproducibility across the research domain focused on indoor fungal testing.
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      Review information

      10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-ENG.AHJ9YR.v1.REPFFZ
      This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com.

      Engineering
      Mould growth assessment,Built environment,The Environment,Fungal testing,Sustainable development,Non-activated,Activated,Indoor fungi,Mould

      Review text

      I'd like to thank the authors for their detailed responses to my comment, and updating the paper.

      Some minor comments:

      You have a 'Results and discussion' section and a 'Discussion' section. This would be better as a Results section and a Discussion section

      In the paper, you refer to sections, but might be best to refer to section names (e.g. Methods) or even subsection names.

      Comments

      Thanks Jonathon - we're very grateful for all your help.

      2022-11-15 15:39 UTC
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