AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Effect of Store Type, Location and Season on the Microorganisms Captured in HVAC Filter Dust Recovered from Retail Facilities
ANDREW HOISINGTON, Juan Pedro Maestre, Sungwoo Bae, Jeffrey Siegel, Kerry Kinney, The University of Texas at Austin
Abstract Number: 484 Working Group: The Indoor Microbiome
Abstract Exposure to airborne microorganisms in U.S. retail stores has not been well characterized even though approximately 10% of the workforce is employed in the retail sector and approximately 40% of Americans visit a retail store on average each day. In this study, the airborne microorganisms captured on the dust in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) filters recovered from 14 stores in Texas and Pennsylvania were delineated using a variety of culture-independent methods including 454-sequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Four store types were investigated including home improvement, grocery, furniture and general merchandise. Two of the retail stores were visited in four seasons and four stores were sampled in alternate seasons. In each store, a clean filter was placed in an HVAC unit recirculating indoor air for a period of 30 days, after which the DNA in the HVAC dust was extracted for analysis.
The results to date indicate that the bacterial microbiome in the retail stores does not aggregate by store type; however, the diversity of microorganisms present is a function of store type with increased diversity present in grocery stores. The lowest diversity was found in a furniture store. Seasonal differences were observed for some stores but not for others. The most significant differences with respect to location were observed in the fungal microbiome with the dominant organisms present at the TX location not present in the microbial DNA recovered from the PA location. In addition, the bacterial and fungal communities have dissimilar beta-diversity indices across the same stores indicating that a priori knowledge of the one community is not sufficient to describe the other community. The results indicate that a robust bacterial and fungal community is captured in HVAC filters and these filters provide a time-integrated measure of the microorganisms present in the retail environment.