Assessment of health risks by air conditioning systems in a printing office.

Repeated measurements were taken in a printers' office where one case of humidifier lung disease had occurred. In water supplies of the office's air conditioning systems, the number of moulds was mainly below 50 colony-forming units (CFU)/mL, the quantity of anaerobic bacteria mostly below 10,000 CFU/mL. Twenty-nine out of the 120 participating employees complained of symptoms such as dyspnea, cough, malaise whose majority was not associated with the workplace. Twenty-eight had IgG antibodies to humidifier antigens prepared from water supplies of the air conditioning systems.