COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INDOOR AIR MICROBIAL PROFILES IN TEACHING SPACES AT RIVERS STATE UNIVERSITY

The presence of bacteria in the indoor air poses a serious problem from the health and environmental point of view. Precise determination of various groups of indoor microbes is necessary in estimating the health hazard and to create standards for indoor air quality control. This is especially important in such densely populated facilities like educational institutions. The indoor air of different classrooms in Rivers state university was investigated using the Koch sedimentation method with a view of determining the air quality and to determine the susceptibility of bacterial isolates to different antibiotics. The Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method was used in determining the susceptibility of the bacterial isolates. The microbial load of the respective classrooms in the morning and peak of class activities showed that faculty of law class room had the highest aerobic bacteria load of 1.180×104 and the chemistry class room had the second highest aerobic bacterial load of 9.440×103 while the class room with the least bacterial load was the Psychology classroom (1.280×103). The microbial load of the respective classrooms in the evening period after class activities showed that the classroom with the highest bacterial load was the Chemistry classroom (4.903×103) followed by the Business Education (G law) class room (3.103×103). The Psychology classroom had the least bacterial load (9.17×102).There were significant differences in the total heterotrophic bacterial load of the morning period (P ≤ 0.05) with the Chemistry laboratory having the highest microbial load. Bacillus, Staphylococcus and Micrococcus sp were the bacterial isolates. The antibiotic susceptibility result showed that the staphylococci isolates were highly resistant to Ampiclox but were very sensitive to Gentamycin, Chloramphenicol and Ciprofloxacin. Bacillus species were very susceptible to Ampiclox, Rifampicin, Ciprofloxacin and Erythromycin. Micrococcus sp showed no resistance to any of the antibiotics