Bioaerosol Science, Technology, and Engineering: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Poor air hygiene as a result of bioaerosol contamination has caused diverse forms of adverse health effects and diseases. In addition, global biosecurity is threatened by purposeful use of biowarfare agents and the vulnerability of people to the infectious agents. Accordingly, developments in high-volume biosampling, including aerosol-to-hydrosol techniques with low cut-off size, real-time bioaerosol detection, adequate biological quantification, and exposure control, as well as the investigation of the link between disease outcome and bioaerosol exposure, are current areas of bioaerosol research. Although milestone progress has been achieved both in bioaerosol sampling and analysis techniques since late 1800s, compared to atmospheric chemistry the bioaerosol field is still understudied. This is partially because of the lack of both bioaerosol scientists and multidisciplinary collaboration. It is becoming necessary to develop a pool of scientists with different expertise, e.g., bioaerosol scientists, environmental engineers, biomedical engineers, epidemiologists, microbiologists, chemists, physicists, as well as researchers in other engineering fields, in mitigating bioaerosol-related adverse health effects, eliminating diseases, and preventing and controlling epidemic outbreaks. This work is conducted to broadly review current state-of-the-art sciences and technologies in the bioaerosol field. In tackling the challenges ahead, the review also provides perspectives for bioaerosol research needs, and further reminds bioaerosol scientists of those existing technologies in other fields that can be leveraged. In view of the past, forward-looking hypotheses and revolutional perspectives are needed to be formed in order to allow the bioaerosol research have major impacts in the academic community in this new millennium.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2008AA062503), National Science Foundation of China (Grants 20877004, 21077005), and the Peking University “100 Scholar Program” fund. This work is also supported by special funds of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control (10Y04ESPCP, 11Z02ESPCP). The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers and editor Tiina Reponen for their great comments in improving the manuscript.