Arabitol and mannitol as tracers for the quantification of airborne fungal spores

Fungal spores constitute a sizeable fraction of coarse organic carbon (OC) in the atmospheric aerosol. In order to avoid tedious spore count methods, tracers for quantifying the spore-OC in atmospheric aerosol are sought. Arabitol and mannitol have been proposed as such tracers, since no other emission sources for these compounds have been reported. By parallel investigations of spore counts and tracer determinations from PM10 filter samples we could derive quantitative relationships between the amounts of tracer compounds and the numbers of spores in the atmosphere for different sites in the area of Vienna. We obtained over all average relationships of 1.2 pg arabitol spore−1, with a range of 0.8–1.8, and 1.7 pg mannitol spore−1, with a range of 1.2–2.4, with a clear site dependence. Thus, using these conversion factors from spore counts to spore-OC and spore-mass, along with analytical data for arabitol or mannitol in filter samples, the contribution of fungal spores to the OC and to the mass balance of atmospheric aerosol particles can be estimated.