AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Development and Comparison of Complementary Methods to Study Skin and Inhalational Exposure to Simulant Pathogens During Personal Protective Equipment Doffing
JENNIFER THERKORN, David Drewry, Jennifer Andonian, Lauren Benishek, Carrie Billman, Ellen Forsyth, Brian Garibaldi, Elaine Nowakowski, Kaitlin Rainwater-Lovett, Lauren Sauer, Maggie Schiffhauer, Lisa Maragakis, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Abstract Number: 890 Working Group: Health-Related Aerosols
Abstract There is much concern regarding the potential for healthcare workers to become exposed to pathogens while wearing/doffing personal protective equipment (PPE) after caring for patients with high consequence pathogens. Fluorescent tracers are often used in PPE studies with ultraviolet lights to identify where healthcare workers contaminate themselves during doffing. This method is limited in detection sensitivity to what can be seen by the human eye and airborne contamination in subjects’ breathing zones cannot be detected. To address these issues, a method was developed using 2 µm polystyrene latex spheres (PSLs). Study participants (n=5) were contaminated with both the traditional fluorescent tracer and nebulized PSLs while following the CDC recommended guidelines for PPE to care for patients with high consequence pathogens. Skin contamination was investigated by UV light for the fluorescent tracer, and via swabbing for PSLs. Potential inhalational exposure of PSLs was determined with a breathing zone air sampler (Button Sampler). In the pilot study, all study subjects had PSL and fluorescent tracer skin contamination. Two subjects had simultaneously-located contamination of both types on a wrist and hand. For all other subjects, the PSL method showed skin contamination that was not detected by the fluorescent tracer. Hands/wrists were more commonly contaminated than the head/face (57% vs. 23% of swabs with PSL detection, respectively). One subject had PSLs detected by the breathing zone air sampler with high concentration (9.7x105 PSL/L air). Future work will further investigate this potential inhalational risk. Overall, this study provides a well-characterized method that can be used to quantitate levels of skin and inhalational contact with simulant pathogen particles. The PSL method serves as a complement to the fluorescent tracer method to study PPE doffing self-contamination.