Air/Surface Bacteria/Virus Collection and Concentration

Monitoring Air Quality for Pathogenic Bacteria and Viruses in Human Close Proximity Environments

It is known that human pathogens, including bacteria and viruses, can spread easily to humans living or working in close proximity environments like hospitals, cruise ships, nursing homes, and prisons. These environments increase the amount of close human group contact where pathogens can easily spread. Programs like the Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been enacted to prevent and control the introduction, transmission, and spread of illnesses on cruise ships through such steps as monitoring and investigation. The food industry has adopted Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) as a systematic preventive approach to hazards such as bacterial and viral pathogens in a manner to avoid the hazards before they become a reality. Monitoring is one step integrated into this process and allows for control and counter measures or corrective action to be implemented. Such monitoring programs will increase the understanding of:

1. The current state of contamination in the facility
2. the effectiveness/limits or gaps of the facility environmental controls and enable improvement
3. the effectiveness/limits or gaps of the facility cleaning and decontamination procedures and enable improvement
4. the infection risk associated with certain staffing locations/functions and the associated PPE requirements

By adopting proactive pathogen monitoring processes, human close proximity environments can take steps to avoid outbreaks within their environment.

InnovaPrep biomonitoring tools work together to collect and concentrate environmental samples and from air, surfaces and liquids. They enable a faster, easier, and more efficient means of delivering the most highly concentrated sample possible for subsequent analysis.

Air Sampling – a small lightweight and portable dry filter air sampler with a built-in tripod. The ADC-200 Bobcat™ collects from 100 LPM to 200 LPM. Sample recovery from the filter takes just seconds and results in a concentrated liquid sample of 6 mL that is ready for analysis using PCR or other molecular methods.

Surface Sampling – A surface sampling method published by NASA JPL showed the effectiveness of how simple felt squares or dry Swiffer-type wipes can be wetted and used to collect samples from large area surfaces the resulting sample can be concentrated on the Concentrating Pipette into a PCR-ready sample of about 200 µL without incubation.