AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Evaluation Criteria for Bioaerosol Samplers
JANA KESAVAN, Jose-Luis Sagripanti, US ARMY ECBC
Abstract Number: 570 Working Group: Health Related Aerosols
Abstract Humans contract a variety of serious diseases through inhalation of infectious aerosols. Thus, the importance of monitoring air for microbial or toxic content is recognized in clinical, occupational, and biodefense arena. However, accurate monitoring of potentially contaminated environments can be hampered by selection of aerosol samplers with inadequate performance for the intended task. In this study, 29 aerosol samplers were evaluated based on their respective air flow, size, weight, power consumption, and efficiency in sampling particles with size ranges within the respirable range. The resulting data demonstrates that sampling air flow and efficiency vary widely, and cannot be predicted from the physical characteristics of air samplers, and hence, that proper selection of air samplers should be more involved than shopping for a device based on the limited characteristics that are published. The findings are summarized in an approach to rationally select bioaerosol samplers for use in the monitoring of infection control and environmental biomonitoring. For example, in the case of bioaerosol sampling, the sampled organism ratio of 1:24 between the Midget Impinger and the BioSampler respectively shows that one of the samplers is significantly more (24-fold) efficient in collecting organisms compared to the other comparable device, highlighting the need for careful selection of aerosol samplers in most applications. In conclusion, the presented data demonstrates that improper selection of air samplers could result in a failure to collect germs or toxins in the respirable range and thus under estimete the true risk, creating a false sense of security under circumstances that could result in unnecessary loss of life as in contaminated health care settings, or in other environments that are accidentally or purposely contaminated with infectious or toxic aerosols.