Analysis of Correlation between Atmospheric Fluorescent Particles and Biomaterials

Abstract

Bio-aerosols are important components of atmospheric aerosols, which can affect human health depending on the origin of biological particles. A real-time monitoring technology for bio-aerosols can rapidly provide information on the current state of biological particles in ambient environment, which substantially minimize the impact of hazardous biological particles. The aim of this study is to evaluate LIF (laser-induced fluorescence) technology on real-time monitoring of bio-aerosols by investigating the correlation between biomaterial concentration (cultured microbes or extracted DNA) and fluorescent particle concentration in ambient environment. For this, we used LIF instrument, BDS (Bio-aerosol Detection System), and analyzed the correlation coefficients from the collected data (the non-fluorescent particle concentration, the fluorescent particle concentration, the cultured microbial concentration, the extracted DNA concentration). Pearson’s correlation coefficients (r) from this study are as follows: 0.85 (p<0.001) between the fluorescent particle concentration and the cultured microbial concentration, 0.93 (p< 0.001) between the fluorescent particle concentration and the extracted DNA concentration, while 0.42 (p<0.01) between the non-fluorescent particle concentration and the cultured microbial concentration, 0.49 (p<0.01) between the non-fluorescent particle concentration and the extracted DNA concentration. It was also found that the size range of the fluorescent particles, which exhibited the highest coefficient for the extracted DNA concentration and the cultured microbial concentration, was 2 to less than 10 micrometer (μm), and their coefficients were 0.89 (p<0.01) and 0.8 (p<0.001), respectively. These results indicate that the fluorescent particles, especially in the range of 2 to less than 10 μm, are highly correlated with bio-aerosols rather than the non-fluorescent particles. Taken together, LIF technology is great for real-time monitoring of bio-aerosols by counting fluorescent particles and resolving particle sizes at ambient atmospheric environment.