Relationship of Ambient Atmosphere and Biological Aerosol Responses from a Fielded Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography-Ion Mobility Spectrometry Bioanalytical Detector

摘要

Interrogation of the ambient atmosphere for identification of bioaerosol material has predominately been accomplished by aerosol particulate collection, concentration, and growth on agar plates coupled with biochemical tests. A challenge facing the aerobiological community is characterizing the ambient atmospheric aerosol burden with respect to a relatively rapid monitoring for distinct biological species. A pyrolysis-gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry stand-alone bioaerosol system was interfaced to an aerosol concentrator to collect ambient background aerosols and produce bioanalytical baseline/background signal levels over 28-hr. Random, discrete, deliberate bursts of biological aerosol near the aerosol concentrator inlet were performed during the continuous bioanalytical interrogation of an outdoor urban atmospheric environment. In the presence of outdoor aerosol background, detection, classification, and characterization of the bioaerosol were accomplished from relatively low to high concentration aerosol bursts of Bacillus subtilis spores and ovalbumin protein. This work provides initial attempts to shepherd continuous bioanalytical instrumentation monitoring of the ambient atmospheric aerosol for detection and classification of specific bioaerosols.