Bioaerosol generation by raindrops on soil
Name
Bioaerosol generation.pdf
Size
2.36 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Joung, Young soo
Ge, Zhifei
Buie, Cullen
Date Issued
March 2017
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Joung, Young Soo; Ge, Zhifei and Buie, Cullen R. “Bioaerosol Generation by Raindrops on Soil.” Nature Communications 8 (March 2017): 14668 © 2017 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Aerosolized microorganisms may play an important role in climate change, disease transmission, water and soil contaminants, and geographic migration of microbes. While it is known that bioaerosols are generated when bubbles break on the surface of water containing microbes, it is largely unclear how viable soil-based microbes are transferred to the atmosphere. Here we report a previously unknown mechanism by which rain disperses soil bacteria into the air. Bubbles, tens of micrometres in size, formed inside the raindrops disperse micro-droplets containing soil bacteria during raindrop impingement. A single raindrop can transfer 0.01% of bacteria on the soil surface and the bacteria can survive more than one hour after the aerosol generation process. This work further reveals that bacteria transfer by rain is highly dependent on the regional soil profile and climate conditions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14668
