Peer reviewed study confirms Allergenco-D’s design provides superior results! 08/17/2007
The Allergenco-D's design goes head-to-head with the Air-O-Cell and comes out on top!
Recently, Environmental Monitoring Systems (ems) provided the new Allergenco-D cassette to Sergey Grinshpun, Ph.D (Professor, Kettering Laboratories, Center for Health-Related Aerosol Studies, Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati) for evaluation under carefully controlled laboratory conditions as well as in field studies.
Professor Grinshpun reported the following preliminary results:
1) "Indeed, our lab tests demonstrated that the cut-off size for the new Allergenco-D impactor designs falls approx. between 1.6 and 2 um. The collection efficiency increases to 80-100% as the particle size reaches ~3 um. This seems sufficient to collect 50% of fungal species, even smaller ones.
2) The overall capture efficiency (d50 ~ 1.7um) of the Allergenco-D cassette was close to its actual collection efficiency, suggesting that the losses were relatively low.
3) Our lab data obtained with the Allergenco-D cassette, challenged with Cladosporium cladosporiodes, Aspergillus versicolor, and Penicillium melinii, revealed that it has higher actual collection efficiency compared to the Air-O-Cell. The difference depends on the spore size and may exceed a factor of 2. This effect is more pronounced for smaller particles. The field tests performed with the Allergenco-D (cassette), Allergenco, and the Air-O-Cell cassette operating in parallel at three sites confirmed the lab findings. The field samples had a broad variety of fungal species. {The Allergenco-D has a higher actual collection efficiency compared to other slit impaction cassettes on the market today.}
4) The deposition area (trace) on the new Allergenco-D impaction slide appeared to be narrower than that of the Air-O-Cell {The Allergenco-D trace also exhibits a very uniform slit deposit distribution.}
5) For each cassette, the spore counts conducted by the three methods--entire area (100%), partial-A (40 randomly chosen microscopic fields), and partial-B (20 traverses)--gave essentially the same results. This suggests that the partial count can be successfully implemented for both configurations."
These data and results with additional test information have been published. Download the full study
