If you’ve got an interest in mold assessment in any building, ASTM’s new standard ASTM D7338 will be of interest. Titled Guide for the Assessment of Fungal Growth in Building, the document provides the user with options for a systematic assessment of fungal growth in buildings. This standard is available from Document Center Inc. now.
The guide describes minimum steps and procedures for collecting background information on a building in question, procedures for evaluating the potential for moisture infiltration or collection, procedures for inspection for suspect fungal growth, and procedures beyond the scope of a basic survey that may be useful for specific problems.
However, ASTM D7338 does not describe a set of uniform steps that will always be performed during an assessment, as would a standard practice. The user of the guide must decide which steps are appropriate for a given situation or building.
This standard is one of four planned on the topic by the D22 committee of ASTM International. Already released ASTM D7391,
Standard Test Method for Categorization and Quantification of Airborne Fungal Structures in an Inertial Impaction Sample by Optical Microscopy, covers procedures for categorizing and enumerating fungal structures by morphological type. The other two planned standards will cover the Examination of Fungal Structures on Tape Lift Samples by Optical Microscopy and the Collection of Total Airborne Fungal Spores via Inertial Impaction Methodology.
Why produce these particular standards? The lack of consensus standards in the fungal sampling and analysis practice was the driving force for the ASTM D22 committee. Anyone who has an interest in indoor air quality or mold/fungal assessment, remediation and analysis should find these four standards essential.
All ASTM International standards are available in paper or pdf format from Document Center Inc. at our website, www.document-center.com. Orders and questions are always welcome by phone (650-591-7600), fax (650-591-7617) and email (info@document-center.com).