AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
A Realizable Fast Way to Measure Biological Airborne Particles via Adenosine Triphosphate Detection
HYEONG RAE KIM, Ji-Woon Park, Ki Young Yoon, Jeong Hoon Byeon, Jungho Hwang, Yonsei University, Korea
Abstract Number: 49 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract In this study, we introduced a fast methodology to measure biological airborne particles which could cause adverse health effect for human and livestock. We sampled biological airborne particles of indoor environments on a swab using a lab-made portable air sampler (5 x 5 x 5.5 cm). For the feasibility test in a laboratory, we generated bacteria particles (Staphylococcus aureus) and sampled the bacteria on the swab using our sampler. The swab was returned back into the kit tube and let the cotton swab react with reagent for ATP bioluminescence. Then we put the swab kit into the luminometer which measures bioluminescence intensity proportional to the number of biological air particles. For the quantification, we sampled the bacteria on the agar plates using a single stage viable impactor and counted the colony number after incubation. And we also measured the concentration of bacteria using APS simultaneously. We correlated the bioluminescence intensity values, colony number, and concentration of the bacteria represented as RLU/m3, CFU/m3, and #/cm3, respectively. After the bacterial feasibility test in the laboratory, we sampled biological air particles in an office, a restroom, a lobby, a cafeteria, and a classroom of the university using our sampler and impactor simultaneously. The results of the feasibility test showed that 1 RLU corresponded to 0.89 ± 0.43 CFU and 1587 ± 261 # for S. aureus cells. However, 1 RLU corresponded to 0.15 ± 0.06 CFU for the indoor biological air particles which is different with the correlation data of the bacterial test in the laboratory. Viable but non culturable (VBNC) biological airborne particles and the fungal spores which have more ATP than that of bacteria might be the reason of the discrepancy of the laboratory and field tests.