Journal article
Setting Risk-Informed Environmental Standards for Bacillus Anthracis Spores
Risk analysis, v 30(10), pp 1602-1622
01 Oct 2010
PMID: 20626695
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
In many cases, human health risk from biological agents is associated with aerosol exposures. Because air concentrations decline rapidly after a release, it may be necessary to use concentrations found in other environmental media to infer future or past aerosol exposures. This article presents an approach for linking environmental concentrations of Bacillus. anthracis (B. anthracis) spores on walls, floors, ventilation system filters, and in human nasal passages with human health risk from exposure to B. anthracis spores. This approach is then used to calculate example values of risk-informed concentration standards for both retrospective risk mitigation (e.g., prophylactic antibiotics) and prospective risk mitigation (e.g., environmental clean up and reoccupancy). A large number of assumptions are required to calculate these values, and the resulting values have large uncertainties associated with them. The values calculated here suggest that documenting compliance with risks in the range of 10-4 to 10-6 would be challenging for small diameter (respirable) spore particles. For less stringent risk targets and for releases of larger diameter particles (which are less respirable and hence less hazardous), environmental sampling would be more promising.
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Details
- Title
- Setting Risk-Informed Environmental Standards for Bacillus Anthracis Spores
- Creators
- Tao Hong - Drexel UniversityPatrick L. Gurian - Drexel UniversityNicholas F. Dudley Ward
- Publication Details
- Risk analysis, v 30(10), pp 1602-1622
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Number of pages
- 21
- Grant note
- Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment R83236201 / Science to Achieve Results grant program
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000282696900017
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-78650428042
- Other Identifier
- 991019167983804721
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications
- Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
- Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods