Indoor Air Pollution and Sick Building Syndrome. Monitoring Aerosol Protein as a Measure of Bioaerosols
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- 作者：Simon K. Poruthoor ; Purnendu K. Dasgupta ; and Zhang Genfa
- 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
- 出版年：1998
- 出版时间：April 15, 1998
- 年：1998
- 卷：32
- 期：8
- 页码：1147 - 1152
- 全文大小：246K
- 年卷期：v.32,no.8(April 15, 1998)
- ISSN：1520-5851
文摘
Excess aerosol protein concentration is suggested to bea diagnostic marker for biological causes of impaired airquality of a building. A simple inexpensiveinstrumenthas been developed to measure aerosol proteinconcentration.Aerosol particles are collected by allowing injectedsteamto condense upon them, thus resulting in their growth,followed by cooling and impaction. The liquid stream,bearingdissolved and suspended aerosol constituents, is putthrough a silica preconcentration column that is elutedsubsequently with dilute H3PO4. Theeluite stream is reactedwith acidic Coomassie blue G; the color of the protein-dye adduct is detected by optical absorbance at ~600 nm.Optimization efforts have been carried out to choosethebest stationary phase for protein preconcentration andreagent composition. In liquid-phase experiments,bovineserum albumin (BSA) displays a limit of detection (LOD)of 16 ng. In aerosol experiments, there is someincreasednoise and the LOD deteriorates by ~2×. The systemcollects aerosol particles with 99.5+% efficiency. TheLODfor a 300 L (30 min at 10 L/min) air sample is thusequivalentto a concentration of ~100 ng/m3 BSA. The systemismounted on a single two-tier standard laboratory cart andhas the potential to be an effective transportablemonitoringdevice for airborne biological contamination.Detectableprotein concentrations were found in an apartment dwellingsetting during cooking activities and in a hotel known tohavea fungal contamination problem.