Evaluating Airborne Culturable Fungal Concentrations on Wide-Body Commercial Passenger Aircraft

Details

• Personal Author:
  Hein M ; Taylor L ; Wallingford, Kenneth M.
• Description:
  Despite the media attention that cabin air quality receives, little research has been conducted to determine the magnitude of fungal concentrations on aircraft. The primary objective of this study was to compare aircraft fungal concentrations at various in-flight times to concentrations collected inside and outside airport terminals. Sixteen flights with durations between 4.5 and 6.5 hours were evaluated on twin aisle wide-body aircraft. Using N-6 impactors and DG18 agar media, triplicate samples were collected in the front and rear of coach class during six sampling intervals throughout each flight: boarding, post-takeoff, mid-flight 1, mid-flight 2, mid-flight 3, and deplaning. Comparison samples were collected inside and outside airport terminals at the origin and destination cities. The MIXED procedure in SAS was used to model the mean and the variance-covariance matrix of the natural log transformed fungal concentrations. Fixed effects considered included the sampling interval and the location of samples (front of coach section, rear of coach section) collected inside the aircraft. Descriptive statistics indicate that fungal concentrations on the aircraft were highest during deplaning (geometric mean (GM): 77.5 colony forming units per cubic meter (cfu/m3), geometric standard deviation (GSD): 2.8) followed by the boarding interval (GM: 65.7 cfu/m3, GSD: 3.8). The front and rear locations within the coach section of the aircraft were not significantly different (p-value > 0.2). Fungal concentrations inside the aircraft during mid-flight (GM: 9.7 cfu/m3, GSD: 2.1) were lower than concentrations observed inside the airport terminals (GM: 44.2 cfu/m3, GSD: 3.3) and appreciably lower than concentrations observed outside the airport terminals (GM: 449.4 cfu/m3, GSD: 2.4). Study results consistently demonstrate that fungal concentrations are higher outside the airport terminals than those observed in-flight on wide-body aircraft. Additional analysis regarding the specific genus and species of fungi observed should be completed to elucidate differences between the sampling environments. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Aircraft Air Pollutants, Occupational Air Pollution Air Pollution, Indoor Environmental Monitoring Fungi Fungicide, Industrial Microbiology Occupational Health Particulate Matter Safety

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• Keywords:
  Air-quality Air-quality-control Air-quality-monitoring Air-sampling Airborne-particles Airports Fungicides Microorganisms Sampling Sampling-methods
• Publisher:
  American Industrial Hygiene Association
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  7
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20027097
• Citation:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 21-26, 2005, Anaheim, California. Fairfax, VA: American Industrial Hygiene Association, 2005 May; :7
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2005
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 21-26, 2005, Anaheim, California
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:69ce1eee361c997fc405f9962bae549f2cffd11e2392ac303e66f513ed838982be58f468e4d3c5edb346b015ee37e26e91d970022aeaaba44290f9c5bf715cad
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/197455/cdc_197455_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.13 MB ]