SGER: Bioaerosol Exposure Hazard Assessment to Emergency Response and Reclamation Personnel

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0553213 Hernandez Late breaking research has confirmed that waterborne microorganisms can be aerosolized from recreational water facilities, such as hot tubs and therapy pools even when such waters are relatively quiescent. The partitioning of microorganisms from water to air is enhanced by common appurtenances, which are designed to entrain small air bubbles in high velocity water streams, and from systems, which rapidly propel water through air for emergency response and civil engineering applications: fire-fighting, cooling, aeration, dust abatement, and the bulk movement of water over containment barriers. Hurricane Katrina has, and will continue to require, the propulsion of large quantities of flood-impacted waters through air for these purposes. Given that these flood waters contain waterborne pathogens, and that microorganisms will certainly be aerosolized from the flood waters during emergency response and subsequent clean-up operations, a unique airborne health risk likely exists in this area. While this inhalation based exposure risk is of a different nature than that associated with 9/11 (biological rather than inorganic) much like central Manhattan, the onset and magnitude of this event has likely contributed to seriously deteriorating the air quality over a wide area of an environmental complication which has largely been ignored because of immediate survival priorities. Like the area near ground zero on and after 9/11, poor air quality may induce both acute and chronic health effects. Unlike Manhattan however, the bioaerosol exposure risk in the New Orleans flood zone may in fact increase over time, and pose a significant health threat to firefighting, engineering and other reclamation personnel, particularly near appurtenances that purposely introduce flood water streams into air. In response to this condition, the purpose of this study will be to monitor the identity, distribution and abundance of microorganisms in aerosols created near such appurtenances, and compare their ecology to that in the immediate source water using widely accepted microscopic and genetic methods. Special attention will be paid to identifying and quantifying potential pathogens in these aerosols.