Resuspension of microbes from carpet flooring and implications for human exposure

摘要

The objective of this work was to investigate the impact of a baby crawling and a person walking over a carpet on the resuspension of particles, focussing on the implications for infant inhalation exposure to microbes. Full-scale chamber measurements with a mechanical crawling infant and a person walking were conducted. We observed that when determining microbial exposure levels in a home from bulk air sampling (i.e. at a height of 1.5 m above the floor), exposure of infants that spend a large amount of time close to floor level may be heavily underestimated due to an increased exposure to particles that are resuspended from flooring. Correlations between microbial levels in floor dust and in the infant breathing zone are mostly moderate and differ between different microbial groups. Thus, the predictive power of infant exposure based on microbial content and levels determined from floor dust or from indoor bulk air sampling is limited.