AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Evaluation of the Wide-Band Integrated Bioaerosol Sensor (WIBS) as an Automated Pollen and Fungal Spore Monitor vs Traditional Hirst-Type Impactors: Payerne, Switzerland in 2013
DAVID O'CONNOR, Natalie Lemonis, Bernard Clot, Santiago Fernández-Rodríguez, Rafael Tormo-Molina, John Sodeau, University College Cork
Abstract Number: 523 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Recently there has been increasing scientific interest in the determination of the airborne concentrations of Primary Biological Aerosol Particles (PBAP) of all types including pollen, fungal spores and bacteria. The reason is due, in part, to their known capacity to directly induce and/or exacerbate health conditions such as hay fever, asthma and Farmers’ Lung. Hay fever in particular has been seen to affect significant portions of the population with many displaying sensitivity to certain pollen species.
Traditional techniques of pollen identification and concentration determination have focused on the impaction of pollen on to a suitable substrate before later using optical microscopy for analysis. This method however is very labour intensive and has data that is usually available after a delay of several days. Recently however, newer on-line, real-time, single particle fluorescence spectrometers such as the Widband Integrated Bioaerosol Sensor (WIBS) have begun to use fluorescent particle concentrations as a proxy for the measurement of PBAP.
In this study a WIBS-4 instrument was co-located with a number of Hirst-type volumetric traps on the roof of the MeteoSwiss meteorological station sited in Payerne, a rural area, for a four month period in the summer of 2013. Total pollen concentrations, measured by the contrasting techniques, were compared and size-resolved diurnal distributions were constructed. Similarly fungal spore concentrations were also compared to fluorescent counts established by the WIBS.