Bioaerosol health effects and exposure assessment: Progress and prospects
Bioaerosol health effects and exposure assessment: Progress and prospects
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/annhyg/meg032
复制
发表时间：
2003-04-01
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Heederik, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Douwes, J;Thorne, P;Heederik, D
暴露在职业环境中的生物气雾剂与广泛的健康影响有关，对公众健康有重大影响，包括传染病、急性毒性效应、过敏和癌症。呼吸道症状和肺功能损害是研究最广泛的，也可能是与生物气溶胶相关的最重要的健康影响之一。除了这些有害的健康影响外，还提出了微生物暴露对特应性和特应性条件的一些保护作用。近年来出现了大量接触生物气雾剂的新工业活动，例如废物回收和堆肥工业、生产高纯度酶的生物技术工业以及使用这些酶的洗涤剂和食品工业。大多数生物制剂还没有建立起剂量-反应关系，关于阈值的知识也很稀少。对于一些污染物，例如木屑、枯草杆菌毒素(细菌酶)和面粉尘，有暴露限值。已经提出了细菌内毒素的暴露限值。由于缺乏有效的定量暴露评估方法，风险评估受到严重阻碍。量化微生物暴露的传统培养方法已被证明用处有限。微生物成分[如过敏原、内毒素、β(1-->；3)-葡聚糖、真菌胞外多糖]的非培养方法和评估方法似乎更成功；然而，这些方法的经验通常有限。因此，需要更多的研究来建立更好的暴露评估工具，并验证新开发的方法。其他需要进一步研究的重要领域包括：微生物暴露对特应性和特应性疾病的潜在保护作用、生物暴露的个体间易感性、生物气雾剂与非生物制剂的相互作用以及其他潜在的健康影响，如皮肤和神经状况以及分娩影响。
Exposures to bioaerosols in the occupational environment are associated with a wide range of health effects with major public health impact, including infectious diseases, acute toxic effects, allergies and cancer. Respiratory symptoms and lung function impairment are the most widely studied and probably among the most important bioaerosol-associated health effects. In addition to these adverse health effects some protective effects of microbial exposure on atopy and atopic conditions has also been suggested. New industrial activities have emerged in recent years in which exposures to bioaerosols can be abundant, e.g. the waste recycling and composting industry, biotechnology industries producing highly purified enzymes and the detergent and food industries that make use of these enzymes. Dose-response relationships have not been established for most biological agents and knowledge about threshold values is sparse. Exposure limits are available for some contaminants, e.g. wood dust, subtilisins (bacterial enzymes) and flour dust. Exposure limits for bacterial endotoxin have been proposed. Risk assessment is seriously hampered by the lack of valid quantitative exposure assessment methods. Traditional culture methods to quantify microbial exposures have proven to be of limited use. Non-culture methods and assessment methods for microbial constituents [e.g. allergens, endotoxin, beta(1-->3)-glucans, fungal extracellular polysaccharides] appear more successful; however, experience with these methods is generally limited. Therefore, more research is needed to establish better exposure assessment tools and validate newly developed methods. Other important areas that require further research include: potential protective effects of microbial exposures on atopy and atopic diseases, inter-individual susceptibility for biological exposures, interactions of bioaerosols with non-biological agents and other potential health effects such as skin and neurological conditions and birth effects.