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(1→3)-β-D-glucan is a major component of the fungal cell wall. It is commonly used to evaluate human exposure to fungi. A personal sampling system was developed to size-selectively evaluate the workplace protection factors (WPFs) of N95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) and surgical masks (SMs) against fungi. This field study was performed with human subjects wearing an N95 FFR or a SM during farming activities. The geometric means of the WPFs of N95 FFRs and SMs were 156.2 and 12.2 for the total culturable fungi, 55.4 and 9.0 for the total fungi, and 10.5 and 11.1 for (1→3)-β-D-glucan. The WPFs for N95 FFRs against fungal contaminants were mostly greater than those for SMs; however, about 4.8%–35.0% of WPFs in the spore size range > 1.8 µm were still below 10 (the assigned protection factor designated for N95 FFRs by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration). The WPFs of N95 FFRs and SMs against culturable fungi and (1→3)-β-D-glucan increased with the particle size. The total (1→3)-β-D-glucan significantly correlated with the total fungi (r = 0.588, p < 0.001) and total culturable fungi (r = 0.463, p = 0.002), which suggests that (1→3)-β-D-glucan can be used as an indicator to assess respiratory protection against airborne fungi on agricultural farms.

Fungi are ubiquitous agents that cause human respiratory diseases. Very few studies have size-selectively assessed farmers' exposure to fungi and fungal fragments in agricultural settings. In this study, a two-stage bio-aerosol cyclone personal sampler was employed to collect airborne fungi and fungal fragments size-selectively at corn, swine, poultry, and mushroom farms. The collected air samples were analyzed for culturable fungi, fungal spores, viable fungi and (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan. The results show that the median concentrations ranged from 3.2 × 10(5) to 1.3 × 10(8)spores/m(3) for total fungal spores, from 1.3 × 10(5) to 5.1 × 10(7)spores/m(3) for total viable fungi, from 1.9 × 10(3) to 1.5 × 10(7)CFU/m(3) for total culturable fungi, and from 4.3 × 10(3) to 2.4 × 10(6)pg/m(3) for total (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan. The aerodynamic sizes of most of the collected fungal contaminants were larger than 1.8 μm. Total (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan significantly correlated with total fungal spores (r = 0.65, p0.001), total viable fungi (r = 0.68, p0.001) and total culturable fungi (r = 0.72, p0.001). Total (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan significantly correlated with Aspergillus/Penicillium, Alternaria, and Cladosporium. Alternaria and Botrytis were also found to highly correlate with (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan at the size1 μm, which was less than the expected spore sizes (the mean measured aerodynamic sizes were 18.5 μm for Alternaria and 6.1 μm for Botrytis); therefore, Alternaria and Botrytis might release small fragments that could enter the deep lung and cause respiratory diseases.