AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
A Design of Experiments Approach for Conducting Bioaerosol Aging Studies in Rotating Drum Aerosol Chambers
MICHAEL SCHUIT, Shanna Ratnesar-Shumate, Artemas Herzog, Jonathan Eshbaugh, Paul Dabisch, NBACC
Abstract Number: 615 Working Group: Environmental Fate of Infectious Aerosols
Abstract Studies examining the effect of environmental conditions on bioaerosol persistence play an important role in both the public health and biodefense fields. Data on the effects of ambient factors on the persistence of an aerosolized pathogen over time can inform disease outbreak prediction and response as well as consequence management planning in biodefense scenarios. The studies necessary to obtain these data, however, can be cumbersome to execute, lengthy, and expensive, particularly when specialized biocontainment systems are required. For this reason, bioaerosol aging studies are excellent candidates for multifactorial design of experiments approaches, which facilitate examination of the effects of multiple parameters, as well as the interaction of those parameters, in an efficient manner. Here we present a design of experiments approach for bioaerosol aging studies where particle size, temperature, relative humidity, and simulated solar radiation are varied simultaneously to develop a predictive model for the persistence a bioaerosol at any combination of conditions within the tested design space. Additionally, characterization data on two novel rotating drum aerosol chambers capable of executing such studies in biocontainment facilities will be presented.