Ventilation and Microbial Communities in LEED-Certified Buildings
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Date
2017-05
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Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
For over a decade and a half, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has strived to improve
building efficiency and indoor environmental quality around the world through its Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program. Attempts to maximize energy
efficiency in LEED-certification projects may be in conflict with indoor air quality with regards to
microbial communities if building designs employ lower ventilation rates in order to reduce energy
demand. However, the influence of LEED certification on indoor microbial communities is largely
unknown. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects that LEED design principles have on indoor
microbial communities. We collected carpet dust and suspended air dust at six paired LEED and
non-LEED buildings, extracted DNA from these samples and then analyzed them by qPCR and highthroughput
DNA sequencing. Sequencing results were analyzed using QIIME version 1.9 and
compared to air exchange rates. Results indicated that air exchange rates were significantly lower
in LEED compared to non-LEED buildings. Consequentially, no significant correlations were seen
between air exchange rates and microbial communities. Sequencing results were also used to
determine the diversities of the microbial communities, along with the similarity of communities in
carpet dust with that of indoor and representative outdoor air. Non-LEED buildings demonstrated
bacterial communities more similar to that of outdoor air than LEED for both weighted and
unweighted UniFracs. However, results were not consistent for all building pairs in either weighted
or unweighted UniFrac distance comparisons. Bacterial communities in non-LEED carpets were
consistently more similar to all related air samples than in LEED for the unweighted UniFrac, but this
correlation was not statistically significant. Fungal communities in non-LEED entrance and backroom
carpet samples were more different than in LEED, demonstrated by the Morisita-Horn distance
comparison, but no significant correlation was found. These results demonstrated that LEED
certification may influence indoor microbial communities, and mechanisms and effects will need to
be determined in future studies.
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Keywords
ventilation, indoor air quality, LEED, bioaerosol, building design, high throughput sequencing