Biomonitoring the indoor environment of agricultural buildings

Introduction. Agricultural hygiene and biomonitoring helps protect people, livestock and crops from pests and disease, including insects, parasites, pathogens and weeds. Optimising the health of animals and crops increases productivity, minimises animal suffering, and ultimately protects human health by ensuring that foodstuffs are safe for consumption. A healthy farm environment also protects the health of the agricultural workers. Ensuring hygiene and health protection is one of the basic construction requirements. Such requirements are examined when commissioning new constructions and examining defects in constructions already in use. One substantial defect is biocorrosion which represents a synergistic process with a complex variety of factors, caused by biochemical manifestations of various micro-organisms (micromycetes). Micromycetes producing mycotoxins therefore play an important role regarding the so-called ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ (SBS) that has become a global problem nowadays. Therefore, agricultural hygiene and biomonitoring aims to minimise the introduction of additional pathogens and pests, as well as the spread of pathogens and pests in farm environments; this helps protect the safety of foodstuffs further down the supply chain. Objective. The aim of the presented study is to point out the need to address indoor environment monitoring, summarizing the most commonly used methods for monitoring biological factors, and characterizing the negative effects of biological agents on humans and animals exposed to their negative effects.