Supplies & Equipment Rental

The Air-O-Cell cassette is a sampling device used for the rapid collection and analysis of mold spores, pollen, insect parts, skin cell fragments, fibers, and inorganic particulates.

The Allergenco-D air sampling cassette is used for the sampling and collection of mold spores, pollen, skin fragments, insects, combustion particles, toners, enivironmental dusts, construction dusts, and other airborne particulates.

The micro 5 cassettes are designed to operate at a flow rate of 5 L/min.

The cassette contains a circular glass slide with adhesive that captures the mold spores and other particulates such as pollen, insect and dust when they impact the slide.

Sterile swabs are ideal for testing the level of contamination on surfaces. Swabs are very useful on hard-to-reach places such as crevices or on wet surfaces where cellophane tape cannot be used. Both mold and bacteria can be tested by culture methods from a single swab. It is recommended that wet swabs are used on dry surfaces and dry swabs on wet surfaces. Wet culture medium swabs are required for bacterial sampling.

Objective of Surface Sampling (Tape, Swab, or Bulk)

To determine whether visible stain or discoloration on a surface sampled is indicative of mold growth.

To determine the type of molds actually growing on the surface sampled

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

Surface sampling for direct microscopic examination is inexpensive and may be analyzed immediately.

A direct microscopic examination of a surface shows exactly what is there.

Surface sampling may also reveal indoor reservoirs of spores that have not yet become airborne.

Disadvantages

The presence of biological materials (spores, hyphal frogments, insect parts, etc) on a particular surface is not a direct
indication of what may be in the air yet health problems related to indoor biological contamination are generally caused by the
inhalation of substantial amount of airborne particulates, sometimes over a substantial period of time.

The Biotest Agar Strips are used with the RCS sampler (High Flow, Isolator, Plus and Standard Microbial Air Sampler). They are easily loaded into the rotor of the sampler. The Agar Strip packaging is composed of a plastic holder with grids (wells) filled with 11 g of a sterile specific solid agar medium. Agar strip are individually enclosed in a plastic to protect them from contamination. For Mold sampling, the strips are filled with malt extract agar (MEA) amended with rose bengal.