{"doi":"10.17760/d20382011","title":"Mold exposure levels in northeastern U.S. schools and homes : a quantitative examination of the difference in mold exposure levels between schools and homes & the asthma prevalence for a subset of northeastern U.S. schools among children ages 4 to 15","abstract":"Asthma is among the most common chronic diseases of children in the United States and has the highest prevalence rate among minority and low-income children, particularly in inner-cities with poor air quality (AAFA, 2019; CDC, 2018; McCormack, 2015). Although the cause(s) of asthma are unknown, indoor mold exposures have been linked to an increased likelihood of becoming asthmatic (Mendell, Mirer, Cheung, Tong, & Douwes, 2011; Quansah, Jaakkola, Hugg, Heikkinen, & Jaakkola, 2012). Given that students spend the majority of their day in school, an examination of the school environment is an important first step to addressing uncontrolled asthma among children. The Health Effects of School Environment study (HESE) recommended that: \"Schools should be routinely tested for global indoor molds' evaluation\" (Simoni et al., 2011). The purpose of this cross-sectional, retrospective baseline study was to examine mold exposure in the school environment compared to the home environment, using the environmental relative moldiness index (ERMI). In order to obtain a better understanding of a child's environment, living in an inner-city with asthma, select constructs of the Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory were utilized to guide the research. The School Inner-City Asthma Study (SICAS) was designed to understand the relationship between asthma and environmental triggers, including mold exposure (Huffaker & Phipatanakul, 2014; Phipatanakul et al., 2017). The subject of this component of the SICAS 2 study was the quantification of mold exposure measured in baseline dust classroom samples taken at the beginning of the school year in each of the first four years of the study prior to introduction of the intervention in the classrooms of students with asthma in 32 schools in the Northeast. Schools (n=32) were recruited for the School Inner-City Asthma Study (SICAS 2) study. Homes (n=34) were selected from the United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) American Healthy Homes Survey (AHHS 2). The 36-ERMI molds were quantified in dust samples, and the geometric mean of each mold's concentration was determined for schools and homes and compared by Wilcoxon rank sum analysis. School building characteristics, student demographics and asthma prevalence were collected for the SICAS 2 study and/or obtained from government websites. Linear regression and mixed models were used for the analysis. The levels of Group 2 molds were significantly greater in schools compared to homes and higher Group 2 levels in schools was linked to higher asthma prevalence (sum of logs {homes vs. schools} Group 2, 15.6 ± 3.2 vs. 12.5 ± 3.0, respectively, p<0.001) and ß= 0.9, 95% CI [0.27, 1.53], p=0.005). The presence of air-conditioning (AC) in school buildings correlated with significantly lower asthma prevalence (ß= -0.41, 95% [0.07, 0.75], p=0.02). These results suggest that AC may help to decrease optimal conditions for mold growth and environmental policy for public facilities is needed to decrease children's exposure to hazardous mold--Author's abstract","journal":null,"year":2020,"id":133123,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9483,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":589236,"name":"Evin Joel Howard","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":154,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:16:14.071209Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}