Different Languages Using Caused Diversity in Exhaled Aerosol Emission

XINYUE LI, Maosheng Yao, Peking University

     Abstract Number: 162
     Working Group: Health-Related Aerosols

Abstract
The COVID-9 pandemic has caused a significant disruption to the society, presenting a public health disaster. Among many transmission routes, aerosol transmission, as one of the key routes for respiratory infections, has attracted great attention during the pandemic. The aerosol transmission route is featured being long range and difficult to detect. Human respiratory activities such as breathing and talking will produce and discharge a large amount of exhaled aerosols that may contain pathogens into the ambient air. However, emission characteristics data of exhaled aerosols are scare, including those regarding the use of different languages. In addressing the problems mentioned above, this study investigated the size-resolved exhaled aerosol particle emission characteristics by employing eight commonly used languages in expressing the same contents. The results showed that the number concentration of exhaled aerosol during conversation was mainly concentrated in range of 0.01-0.5 μm, and the peak level was 500-9000 particles/L across the size range of 0.01-0.1 μm. The total emission rates of Korean and Japanese speaking were significantly higher than those from other six languages. The exhaled aerosol emission rates were affected by language type, sound frequency distribution, gender, and body mass index. The exhaled aerosol emission rate of men was found slightly higher than that from women, and there was a positive correlation between male BMI and exhaled aerosol emission rate, while female BMI showed an inverted "U" distribution for exhaled aerosol emission rates.