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Characterizing and managing risk from environmental release of pathogens of concern
Dissertation   Open access

Characterizing and managing risk from environmental release of pathogens of concern

Tao Hong
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Dec 2011
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-3788
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Abstract

Bacillus anthracis--Decontamination Bioterrorism--Risk assessment Civil Engineering
The 2001 anthrax letter attacks not only caused the deaths of 5 people, the distribution of prophylactic antibiotic therapy to more than 30,000 people, and the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to decontaminate the affected buildings, but also reminded decision makers of the urgency of having a risk management framework for response and recovery from a biological incident in a timely manner. In order to address this concern, the overall objective of this dissertation is to develop mathematical models to promote the understanding of a biological attack, to reduce uncertainty and variability in risk assessments of bioterrorism agents, and to provide information for decision-making steps to minimize the associated mortality and economic loss. This dissertation first adopted the Bayesian Monte Carlo (BMC) method to validate a previously published risk assessment framework by the author, which developed surface concentration standards for B. anthracis by linking surface contamination levels with estimates of risk to exposed individuals. The benefit of this analysis significantly reduced uncertainties in the estimated human health risk, which provided more accurate information for the decision makers seeking to identify the proper response. Then this dissertation focused on characterizing the risk of a biological release. It developed a 7-step evaluation framework for choosing the sampling and modeling approach which most accurately recovers details of a release from surface samples. The findings of this analysis not only answered the question "what is the best place to sample?", but also provided insights as to the quantity of samples that should be taken. The last chapter of this dissertation extends the fate, transport, and risk assessment model by synthesizing available information on five Category A pathogens (Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Variola major and Lassa) to develop quantitative guidelines for how environmental pathogen concentrations may be related to human health risk. These findings provide critical information for developing a risk-informed biological attack response system. Questions such as "how to estimate if risks warrant the distribution of prophylactic antibiotics?", and "how to choose between active or passive decontamination approaches?" were addressed.

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