Quantitative microbial risk assessment of bioaerosols in a wastewater treatment plant by using two aeration modes

  • PDF / 377,028 Bytes
  • 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 75 Downloads / 190 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


RESEARCH ARTICLE

Quantitative microbial risk assessment of bioaerosols in a wastewater treatment plant by using two aeration modes Cheng Yan 1 & Zi-cheng Gui 1 & Jun-ting Wu 1 Received: 19 August 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract Nonnegligible emission of bioaerosols usually occurs during aeration of wastewater in aerator tanks in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Literature had shown that the respiratory and intestinal diseases of workers at WWTPs are related to bioaerosols. Thus, quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) based on Monte Carlo simulation was utilized in this research to assess the health risks of Gram-negative bacteria bioaerosol (GNBB) and Staphylococcus aureus bioaerosol (SAB) among academic visitors and staffs. Results showed that the concentrations of GNBB and SAB in the inverted umbrella aeration mode were consistently higher than those in the microporous aeration mode under all six size distribution ranges of the Anderson six-stage impactor. Thus, GNBB and SAB can be highly threatening to the weasand and first bronchus (or alveoli and third bronchus) for the exposure populations. The health risks (annual probability of infection (Py) and disease burden (DB)) of males were constantly higher than those of females for each certain exposure scenario. The health risks of staffs were higher than those of academic visitors when assessed by Monte Carlo simulation. The wearing of mask is an effective measure to minimize health risks through reducing the bioaerosol concentration intake. Especially, for the academic visitors and staffs exposed to GNBB, all their DB failed to meet the World Health Organization DB benchmark under various credible intervals when they were without a mask on. In a word, the results of health risk assessment in this research can be utilized as an educational tool and policy basis to facilitate the implementation of efficacious prevention measures to protect the public health from bioaerosol health threats in WWTPs. Keywords Bioaerosol . Wastewater treatment plant . Quantitative microbial risk assessment . Monte Carlo simulation . Annual probability of infection . Disease burden

Introduction Wastewater contains considerable amounts of microbes that become aerosolized during the different stages of wastewater treatment process in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) (Teixeira et al. 2013). The highest emission of bioaerosols usually occurs during aeration of wastewater in aerator tanks and is highly affected by aeration modes (Niazi et al. 2015; SzyłakResponsible Editor: Diane Purchase Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11180-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Cheng Yan [email protected] 1

School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, 388 Lumo Road, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China

Szydłowski et al. 2016). The respiratory and intestinal diseases of workers in