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Quantification of Expiratory Particulate Matter Generated from Singing, Speaking, Breathing, Cough and Playing of Musical Instruments
JUSTICE ARCHER, Henry Symons, Natalie Watson, Christopher Orton, Pallav Shah, James Calder, Bryan R. Bzdek, Declan Costello, Jonathan P. Reid, University of Bristol
Abstract Number: 302
Working Group: Infectious Aerosols in the Age of COVID-19
Abstract
The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to heighten the awareness of aerosol generation by human expiratory events and their potential role in viral respiratory disease transmission. Sufficient knowledge of expiratory particulate particle size, number concentration, and sites of origin is therefore of great importance for understanding respiratory disease transmission via the aerosol route.
In this work, we expand on our previous study (Gregson et al., 2021), which informed changes in UK government policy on musical performances in the summer 2020 to include a wider cohort of professional musicians (adult and children), to quantify the number concentration and size distributions of expiratory particulate matter generated during vocal activities (singing, speaking, breathing and coughing) and playing woodwind and brass instruments. We carried out measurements in a laminar flow operating theatre, with a near-zero background aerosol concentration allowing us to quantify relatively the small amounts of expiratory particulate matter produced from the expiratory activities. We used an aerodynamic particle sizer (APS, Model 3321, TSI Inc.) at 1s scan time to quantify the number concentration and size distribution of particles with diameters in the range of 0.5 – 20 μm. For expiratory droplets >20 µm, we used water-sensitive paper placed at a distance of 10 cm from a participant's mouth level to assess differences in the prevalence of droplets produced from singing and coughing. We will present measurements of expired aerosol size distributions and number concentrations generated by adults and children singers during vocal activities (singing, speaking, breathing, and coughing) and playing woodwind and brass instruments.