Indoor bioaerosol dynamics

Nazaroff, William W

Floor dust or settled dust can be richly microbial (Rintala et al., 2012) , and this can serve as a bioaerosol source through resuspension . In a laboratory study, substantial bacteria and mold emission rates were observed from the operation of household vacuum cleaners (Veillette et al., 2013) . This finding is not a surprising: Vacuum cleaner use was already demonstrated to be a potent short-term generator of airborne particulate matter, both in the exhaust air (because of incomplete filtration) and through mechanical agitation of the floor (Corsi et al., 2008; Knibbs et al., 2012) . The net effect of vacuuming on indoor bioaerosol levels is not clear, however, as presumably vacuum cleaner use would also reduce the floor load of microbes available for later resuspension.