Death Mechanisms in Microbial Bioaerosols with Special Reference to the Freeze-Dried Analog

Generation and sampling of nanoscale infectious viral aerosols

“…The source of the loss in infectivity was not studied. One factor could be our efforts to generate a particularly small aerosol (less than 300 nm) resulting the much lower protection of the virions (Israeli et al 1994;Verreault et al 2008;Zuo et al 2014). Another factor could be microbial damage by the Collison nebulizer during the aerosolization process (Reponen et al 1997;Zhen et al 2014;Ibrahim et al 2015).…”

“…The specific species of virus may be more or less vulnerable to inactivation upon aerosolization and collection; in other words, some viruses are hardier than others (Verreault et al 2008;Appert et al 2012;Zuo et al 2013;Ge et al 2014). The method of aerosolization and the presence of protective factors (e.g., proteins, sugars, fomites) can impact virus viability (Israeli et al 1994;Verreault et al 2008;Zuo et al 2014) by shielding the microorganism from inactivation. The environmental conditions to which the virus is exposed, such as ultraviolet light (UV, e.g., from the sun), temperature, and relative humidity, can significantly impact viability and is species dependent (Verreault et al 2008;Posada et al 2010;Gralton et al 2011;Zhao et al 2012).…”

Persistence of Category A Select Agents in the Environment

“…Aerosols. Research on category A pathogen survival in aerosols is limited, but it is known that most biological agents, with some exceptions, face decay once exposed to air due mainly to freezing, dehydration, and UV exposure during the daylight as well as to many other contributing environmental factors (45,50). In general, vegetative forms are much more susceptible to open-air conditions than bacterial spores (Tables 4 and 7) (36,73,80).…”