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Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation

Airborne transmission is considered as an important route for the spread of infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and is primarily determined by the droplet sedimentation time, that is, the time droplets spend in air before reaching the ground. Ev...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rezaei, Majid, Netz, Roland R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34093064
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cocis.2021.101471
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author Rezaei, Majid
Netz, Roland R.
author_facet Rezaei, Majid
Netz, Roland R.
author_sort Rezaei, Majid
collection PubMed
description Airborne transmission is considered as an important route for the spread of infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and is primarily determined by the droplet sedimentation time, that is, the time droplets spend in air before reaching the ground. Evaporation increases the sedimentation time by reducing the droplet mass. In fact, small droplets can, depending on their solute content, almost completely evaporate during their descent to the ground and remain airborne as so-called droplet nuclei for a long time. Considering that viruses possibly remain infectious in aerosols for hours, droplet nuclei formation can substantially increase the infectious viral air load. Accordingly, the physical-chemical factors that control droplet evaporation and sedimentation times and play important roles in determining the infection risk from airborne respiratory droplets are reviewed in this article.
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spelling pubmed-81645132021-06-01 Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation Rezaei, Majid Netz, Roland R. Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci Article Airborne transmission is considered as an important route for the spread of infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and is primarily determined by the droplet sedimentation time, that is, the time droplets spend in air before reaching the ground. Evaporation increases the sedimentation time by reducing the droplet mass. In fact, small droplets can, depending on their solute content, almost completely evaporate during their descent to the ground and remain airborne as so-called droplet nuclei for a long time. Considering that viruses possibly remain infectious in aerosols for hours, droplet nuclei formation can substantially increase the infectious viral air load. Accordingly, the physical-chemical factors that control droplet evaporation and sedimentation times and play important roles in determining the infection risk from airborne respiratory droplets are reviewed in this article. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-10 2021-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8164513/ /pubmed/34093064 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cocis.2021.101471 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Rezaei, Majid
Netz, Roland R.
Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title_full Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title_fullStr Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title_full_unstemmed Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title_short Airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: Effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
title_sort airborne virus transmission via respiratory droplets: effects of droplet evaporation and sedimentation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34093064
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cocis.2021.101471
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