I recently had mold testing conducted in my house using Air-O-Cell cassettes.    The laboratory that conducted the analyses was identified as an AIHA accredited laboratory for microbiological analysis under AIHA’s Environmental Microbiology Laboratory Accreditation Program (EMLAP) and Environmental Microbiological Proficiency Analytical Testing (EMPAT) program.  Does this mean that the reported test results are accurate?  What does such an accreditation program mean?  Anon

 

            The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) has accreditation programs for environmental testing laboratories.  Laboratories can be accredited to conduct a variety of chemical analyses and for a specific substances such as lead , asbestos, etc.  They can also be accredited to conduct specific microbial analyses such as bacteria, culturable fungi, direct examination of fungi, and only recently direct examination of airborne mold samples.

            Most laboratories reporting they are EMLAP laboratories are accredited to count and identify bacteria, culturable fungi, and fungi direct or some combination of these.  This means that they have passed a review by AIHA accreditation teams in meeting its requirements for quality control and standard operating procedures.  Those accredited for culturable fungi participate in AIHA’s EMPAT program in which the laboratory has to correctly identify mold cultures sent to them on a regular basis.  Fungal direct means that participating laboratories need to correctly identify mold types on surfaces (such as a tape lift) . 

            The accreditation basically indicates that a laboratory’s procedures are appropriate for the conduct of a particular analysis.  It does not certify that a particular analysis was actually conducted correctly and a particular result accurate.  Laboratories are accredited individual analysts are not.  The fact that analysts are not accredited is a major weakness of AIHA’s accreditation program

            Until April 29, 2005 AIHA had no accreditation requirements for conducting total airborne mold spores analyses and to this writer’s knowledge no laboratory is currently accredited to conduct analyses of samples from total airborne mold sampling (to be discussed in the next posting).

            As such, what does a reference to EMLAP and EMPAT mean on a report of Air-O-Cell and other total airborne mold sampling results?  In reality it means very little since those accreditations are not applicable to the test results reported to you.

 

September 16, 2005