AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Analysis of Airborne Microbiome Using a Portable Bioaerosol Monitoring and Collection Device
KAVINDRA KUMARAGAMA, Hema Ravindran, Shane Rogers, Shantanu Sur, Suresh Dhaniyala, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, USA
Abstract Number: 610 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Environmental bioaerosol monitoring by portable, low-cost devices is recently gaining interest in the context of health monitoring and detection of bio-terror threat. To address such need, we have developed a portable, low cost, low power device in conjunction with a local startup. This device, called ioT Real-time Aerosol Concentration sensor and Biological sampler (TRAC- B), is capable of measurement of aerosol concentration and particle capture for offline analysis. TRAC-B uses a low-cost optical sensor for real-time aerosol concentration measurements and an electrostatic precipitator (EP) to collect airborne particles for offline analysis. In this presentation, we will primarily discuss our measurements made with the EP. EP has a low-cost design that allows for 3D printing, has a low-pressure drop allowing for high sample flowrates with a small fan, and the design is optimized for ease of sample extraction. For a preliminary field study, we have deployed several TRAC-B units in different indoor and outdoor locations within Clarkson University. We analyzed the collected samples using different bio-analysis techniques including, culturing, Sanger sequencing, and next generation sequencing to determine the diversity and abundance of the airborne biological particles in various indoor and outdoor environments. We will present our results from this analysis.