Laboratory Partnership: Our Analysis Lab

Every AirTrap sample is analysed at Apacor's mould laboratory in Wokingham, England – the same company that manufactures the cassettes. This page explains who analyses your sample, how, and what that means for the results you receive.

Who analyses your sample

Apacor Limited is a diagnostics manufacturer founded more than 30 years ago, with a background in parasitology and microbiology and laboratory customers in more than 110 countries. The mould lab applies that laboratory discipline to environmental samples: documented intake, traceable sample IDs, a fixed analysis protocol and a specialist review of every result.

How samples are analysed

• Intake: every cassette is logged against its barcode and your online return-form submission; the lab confirms the number of samples received.
• Digitisation: the slide is scanned on a whole-slide scanner so the entire trace is available for analysis – not a few fields of view.
• Identification and counting: the Sporecyte AI identifies and counts spores and other particles on the digitised slide, by genus, and converts the counts to spores/m³ from the 75-litre sample volume.
• Specialist review: a specialist checks every result before the report is issued.
• Report: spores/m³ per genus, indoor samples compared with the outdoor reference, sampling parameters and images from the slide, delivered as a PDF by e-mail.

What this means for you

A documented chain from the cassette to the number in the report: the method (total spore count by impaction sampling, the principle described in DIN ISO 16000-20), the sampling parameters and the reviewer are on record. The report supports the assessment of a surveyor, remediation contractor or building biologist; it does not replace it.

The AI side

How Sporecyte identifies spores and what the analysis delivers: What is Sporecyte? – and the partnership behind it: Sporecyte partnership.

Questions

• Which lab analyses my sample? Apacor's mould laboratory in Wokingham, United Kingdom.
• How long does the analysis take? A few working days after the samples reach the lab. Turnaround, report contents and the use of results in expert reports: see the FAQ.

Every AirTrap XL pack includes the analysis described here: complete sets and refill packs.