| Summary: | 碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 職業安全衛生研究所 === 100 === Recently, people spend much more time in indoor environments. Children are recognised as particularly sensitive population to air pollution because their lung structure and immune system is not fully developed, especially, the children who have asthma or allergy.
Endotoxin is a term for the toxin characteristic of the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria. Endotoxin is heat-stable, and ubiquitous in the environment. It is also recognized as a powerful and nonspecific stimulant to the immune system, endotoxin can induce negative health responses on respiratory symptoms, such as severe asthma attacks and sick building syndrome symptoms.
In many studies related to health effects of endotoxin, samples are usually only collected from a reservoir such as settled house dust. This method may inaccurately represent the quantity of allergens and pyrogens entering the lungs. So the purposes of this study are 1) to evaluate airborne endotoxin in schoolchildren’s house in Kaohsiung City; 2) to compare the airborne concentration of endotoxin with asthma/allergy and non-asthma/non-allergy in children’s houses; 3) to investigate the relation between endotoxin and asthma /allergy and lung function among school-age children; 4) to discuss relation between endotoxin and other bioaerosols.
In this study, there are two sampling period of endotoxin, 2010/04/06~2010/10/06 and 2011/04/13~2012/02/22. We collected the bedroom and living room’s air samples for endotoxin analysis on 37-mm Teflon filters with 1-μm pore size at a flow-rate of 20 L/min for 24 hrs. We measured children’s lung function (HI-801, CHEST, JAPAN) and measured other bioaerosols, such as fungal and bacterial bioaerosols by MAS-100 (MERCK USA). Tryptic soy agar (TSA) and Malt extract agar (MEA) was used for cultivated of bacteria and fungus, respectively. Furthermore, according to the children’s blood sample to define allergy or not.
We found the endotoxin concentration have no significantly difference between the children with asthma/allergy and children without asthma/allergy. We also found that asthmatic/allergic children’s lung function were better than non-asthmatic/non-allergic children. For the airborne endotoxin in all bedrooms, the first and third quartile endotoxin level in all bedrooms were 0.31 EU/m3 and 1.97 EU/m3. When comparing with 0.31 EU/m3 (Q1), the endotoxin concentration higher than 1.97 EU/m3 (Q3) was associated with a significant prevalance in asthma or allergy with the OR (95% CI) of 3.825(1.221-11.981).
The conclusion of this study is that the higher endotoxin concentration in the house may cause children to get the asthma or allergy, but not necessarily poor lung function of asthmatic or allergic children, the endotoxin may be a protective effect on children’s lung function.
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