Survey of viable airborne fungal propagules in French wine cellars

A study was carried out of the viable airbornemycological flora of 12 wine cellars in the Arboisregion in France. Results show that there wereconsiderable variations in the quantities ofpropagules: from 57 to 2547 CFU m^–3. There was arelatively large number of species (48), which aremore frequently recovered from certain cellar types.The most common were Cladosporium sphaerospermum,Aspergillus versicolor, A. restrictus, Penicilliumglabrum, P. dierckxii, P. implicatum and P.brevicompactum. So the risk of allergies subsequentto inhalation of large quantities of spores is farfrom minimal.