AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
The Microbiology of Indoor Air Quality in a University Dormitory and Impacts on Student Health
JULIA LUONGO, Noah Fierer, Shelly Miller, University of Colorado Boulder
Abstract Number: 540 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract The air we breathe indoors is home to an enormous amount of microbial diversity. We have a limited understanding of what bacteria we inhale and the factors that influence this microbial diversity. Some of these microbes are pathogens or allergens and may negatively impact health, while others may be beneficial. We do not know how changes in building design or operation to increase energy efficiency will impact the amounts and types of microbes found in indoor air. We expect that increases in energy efficiency will come at the cost of increased microbial loads in indoor air due to reductions in outdoor air ventilation rates. This study investigates how changes in ventilation rates may alter the health of building occupants and the amounts and types of bacteria found in indoor air. Ventilation rates were measured in a subset of rooms in a dormitory using various techniques: direct measurement of outdoor air supply, tracer gas decay, and equilibrium carbon dioxide analysis. Passive air samples and HVAC filters were collected from the majority of rooms in the dorm. We sequenced the bacterial 16S rRNA gene (V4-V5 region) from these samples for community analysis. A cohort of 50 students living in the dorm was contacted every other week over the course of one semester for self-reports of illness incidence. Differences in microbial community composition will be investigated spatially across the dormitory, across various room and HVAC system characteristics, and with self-reported health data. Associations between ventilation rates and health are also investigated.