Abstract
Alfresco (def. clean, outdoor) airborne bacteria were collected with a commercially available wet-cyclone bioaerosol sampler to demonstrate its use, sample processing and resultant observations of total and culturable bacteria in mid-summer in the mid-Willamette River Valley, OR. Some critiques of the system are given. The maximum and minimum total and culturable airborne bacterial concentrations in the samples were 5.9 × 105 and 8.8 × 102 cells m−3, and 1.3 × 104 and 3.1 CFU m−3, respectively. What is thought to be a diurnal cycle was also observed for both fractions with highest concentrations during the day and lowest at dawn and dusk. The culturable bacteria as a percentage of the total, was maximal at mid-day (≈ 3%) and minimal at early morning and late evening (≈ 0.5–2%). Contrarily, the total bacteria in the downwind dust plume of a grass seed combine was 2.9 × 106 cells m−3 and of these approximately 73% were culturable, a much greater culturable percentage than found in the alfresco outdoor atmosphere.
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Lighthart, B., Tong, Y. Measurements of total and culturable bacteria in the alfresco atmosphere using a wet-cyclone sampler. Aerobiologia 14, 325–332 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02694301
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02694301