Fungal contamination of sawmills

Sawmills represent an occupational environment with high risk of exposure to wood dust and multiple wood-associated chemicals and microbiota. Several components in the sawmill aerosol can cause health effects, but exposure to fungal spores has been of particular interest, and is associated with respiratory symptoms and hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) among sawmill workers. The severity of health effects resulting from fungal exposure and the number of workers this potentially includes, have received attention for decades and still rises concerns in the sawmill industry. The fungal exposure have been reduced over 200 times over the past 30 years due to improved drying technology and other exposure reducing measures in the sawmill industry. Concomitantly has the frequency and severity of reported HP been reduced, but is still reported several times a year for some workers, and ODTS and other inflammatory and respiratory impairments are frequently observed. The present article gives an overview of the scientific evidence of fungal exposure and related health effect among sawmill workers in several countries in Europe, America, Oceania, and Asia. The impact of differences in methods for fungal aerosol sampling, detection and quantification for how fungal exposure is reported and how we can relate the exposure to health...