Historical Perspective

Geernaert, G.L.

doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9291-8_1

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 51 publications

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“…4a). Here, when the bubbles are smaller than 1 mm, the number of aerosols exponentially decreases with decreasing bubble radius40414243; therefore, the number of aerosols can be expressed as N aerosols = A exp(−3 −1 d bubble ), where N aerosols is the number of aerosols, A is a constant value ( A ∼7.5) and d bubble is the bubble diameter4041. The bubble diameter is ten times greater than the mean diameter of the aerosols4445; thus, the number of aerosols can be expressed as N aerosols = N o exp(−30 −1 d aerosol ), where N o is a constant and d aerosol is the aerosol diameter.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioaerosol generation by raindrops on soil

2017

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Aerosolized microorganisms may play an important role in climate change, disease transmission, water and soil contaminants, and geographic migration of microbes. While it is known that bioaerosols are generated when bubbles break on the surface of water containing microbes, it is largely unclear how viable soil-based microbes are transferred to the atmosphere. Here we report a previously unknown mechanism by which rain disperses soil bacteria into the air. Bubbles, tens of micrometres in size, formed inside the raindrops disperse micro-droplets containing soil bacteria during raindrop impingement. A single raindrop can transfer 0.01% of bacteria on the soil surface and the bacteria can survive more than one hour after the aerosol generation process. This work further reveals that bacteria transfer by rain is highly dependent on the regional soil profile and climate conditions.

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