Abstract Number: 40 Working Group: Health Related Aerosols
Abstract The spread of viruses in the air is still a misunderstood phenomenon. Many questions remain unanswered regarding their aerosolization, transport and survival over time, in various environmental conditions. The development of standardized models for the study of viral aerosols would lead to major advances in this field. The study of aerosolized bacteriophages offers a very interesting opportunity as models. Indeed, they are safe, inexpensive and even some have morphologies similar to eukaryotic viruses.
In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of relative humidity (RH) and temperature over the time on viral bioaerosols using a rotating chamber. We used four tailless bacteriophages: MS2 (ssRNA), Phi6 (segmented dsRNA), PhiX174 (ssDNA) and PR772 (dsDNA). The phages were aerosolized using a Collison 6-jet into a 50 liters drum, rotating at one rpm. The aerosols were maintained in the desired conditions for 0, 6 and 14 hours and sampled with a Biosampler. The experiments were conducted at 18°C and at three RH levels (20, 50 and 80%), as well as at 30°C and 80% RH.
We obtained four different responses for the survival of those phages in the conditions tested: 1) at 18°C, MS2 is resistant to all levels of RH, 2) Phi6 is less affected at low levels of RH, 3) PhiX174 and PR772 are more stable at high levels of RH, 4) PR772 seems less resistant to long distance transmission, mimicked by long term aerosol state. The selected phages could be good models for the study of airborne transmission of viruses as they exhibit various behavior and resistance to stresses.