AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Human Occupants as Sources of Airborne Particles in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
DUSAN LICINA, Seema Bhangar, Brandon Brooks, Robyn Baker, Brian Firek, Xiaochen Tang, Michael Morowitz, Jillian Banfield, William Nazaroff, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Abstract Number: 544 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract Premature infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) have underdeveloped immune systems that would likely make them highly susceptible to adverse health consequences from air pollutant exposure. Little is known about the sources of indoor airborne particles and the mechanisms by which they are transmitted to premature infants in the NICU environment. To investigate the sources of airborne particles within a NICU, we monitored the spatial and temporal variations of indoor environmental parameters and human occupancy. The experiments were conducted over one year period in a private-style NICU of a large hospital building in the United States. The NICU was served with central heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system equipped with an economizer and a high-efficiency particle filtration system. The following parameters were measured continuously during weekday with 1-min resolution: particles larger than 0.3 microns resolved into 6 size groups, CO2 level, dry-bulb temperature and relative humidity, and presence or absence of occupants. Over periods of a few weeks each, measurements were conducted in total of 16 rooms occupied with premature infants. In parallel, a second monitoring station was operated in a nearby hallway or at the local nurses’ station, providing more than 5 million data points in total. Initial analysis of the data suggests a strong link between the indoor particle concentration and human occupancy in the infant rooms. The detected particle peaks were more discernible among larger particles compared to smaller particles. The large particle (5.0 – 10 microns) concentration levels averaged across all babies were 2.7 times higher when the human occupancy was detected, compared to unoccupied baby rooms. Ongoing data analysis will provide more detailed insights for interpreting the data collected. This study is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the sources and concentrations of airborne particles in the NICU.