10th International Aerosol Conference September 2 - September 7, 2018 America's Center Convention Complex St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Abstract View
Studying Survival of Aerosolised Bacteria Using Poly(methyl) Methacrylate Microthreads
ANDREW SCOTT, Carwyn Davies, Emma Keyser, Dstl
Abstract Number: 834 Working Group: Infectious Bioaerosol
Abstract Appreciating the hazard posed by airborne infectious agents is crucial to allow planning and implementation of effective impact-mitigation strategies for military and civilian first responders. In order to understand the potential downwind hazard following a release of a biological agent it is necessary to define the aerosol survival characteristics of each agent under a range of environmental conditions. Experimental determination of aerosol survival in the laboratory can be challenging, particularly with the added physical constraints and biosafety and engineering requirements of studying high-containment pathogens. To address some of these challenges, one approach is to use poly(methyl) methacrylate microthreads to capture pathogen-containing particles from an aerosol. Once captured, the particles are stably held by the microthreads and appear to behave as if they were still suspended in the air. The benefit of this system is that it allows the captured particles to be easily moved and placed in environmental conditions which might otherwise be inaccessible using the traditional methods of maintaining buoyant aerosols, such as the rotating drum. However, the establishment of this technique has not been without its own complications. Here we will present our work to establish and validate the fundamental limits and parameters of the microthread technique, its potential for establishing survival characteristics in varying environmental conditions in the laboratory and how some critical validation studies might be undertaken, in particular examination of the survival characteristics of non-pathogenic reference microorganisms to allow benchmarking of the results gained in the laboratory.