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

最新的突破性研究证实，水上微生物可以从娱乐用水设施中雾化，比如热水浴缸和治疗池，即使这些水相对平静。微生物从水到空气的分配通过常见的设备得到加强，这些设备被设计成在高速水流中夹带小气泡，以及从系统中快速推动水通过空气，用于应急响应和土木工程应用：消防、冷却、通风、除尘和水在密封屏障上的大量移动。为了这些目的，卡特里娜飓风已经并将继续需要通过空气推动大量受洪水影响的水。鉴于这些洪水含有水媒病原体，并且在应急响应和随后的清理行动期间，微生物肯定会从洪水中雾化，因此该地区可能存在独特的空气传播健康风险。虽然这种以吸入为基础的暴露风险与9/11相关的风险性质不同（生物而非无机），就像曼哈顿市中心一样，这次事件的发生和规模可能导致了大面积环境并发症的空气质量严重恶化，而这一环境并发症在很大程度上被忽视了，因为迫切的生存优先事项。就像9/11事件中和之后的归零地附近地区一样，糟糕的空气质量可能会导致急性和慢性的健康影响。然而，与曼哈顿不同的是，新奥尔良洪水区的生物气溶胶暴露风险实际上可能会随着时间的推移而增加，并对消防、工程和其他填海工作人员构成重大的健康威胁，特别是在故意向空气中引入洪水流的设备附近。针对这种情况，本研究的目的将是监测这些设备附近产生的气溶胶中微生物的身份，分布和丰度，并使用广泛接受的显微镜和遗传学方法将其生态学与直接水源水中的生态学进行比较。将特别注意识别和量化这些气溶胶中的潜在病原体。

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.