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Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing

Murine norovirus (MNV) was used as a surrogate for human viral pathogens (e.g., norovirus) to determine if toilet flushing resulted in the aerosolization of virus. A flushometer type toilet was seeded with a viral solution of 10(5) and 10(6) PFU mL(-1) of MNV and then flushed. Upon flushing, two bio...

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Autores principales: Boles, Corey, Brown, Grant, Nonnenmann, Matthew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8651634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34876637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02938-0
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author Boles, Corey
Brown, Grant
Nonnenmann, Matthew
author_facet Boles, Corey
Brown, Grant
Nonnenmann, Matthew
author_sort Boles, Corey
collection PubMed
description Murine norovirus (MNV) was used as a surrogate for human viral pathogens (e.g., norovirus) to determine if toilet flushing resulted in the aerosolization of virus. A flushometer type toilet was seeded with a viral solution of 10(5) and 10(6) PFU mL(-1) of MNV and then flushed. Upon flushing, two bioaerosol samplers were activated to collect aerosolized MNV. Prior to the experiment, two optical particle counters monitored particle size and number distribution of aerosol produced from flushing a toilet across height, position, and side. The location with the highest mean particle concentration, was behind the toilet and 0.15 m above the toilet bowl rim, which is where bioaerosol sampling occurred. Bioaerosol and toilet water samples were collected, extracted and then quantified using RT-ddPCR. The concentration of MNV collected after seeding the toilet water ranged from 2.18 × 10(5) to 9.65 × 10(6) total copies of MNV. Positive samples of airborne MNV were detected with collected concentrations ranging from 383 to 684 RNA copies/m(3) of air. This study provides evidence that viral pathogens may be aerosolized when a toilet is flushed. Furthermore, the MNV used in this study is a model organism for human norovirus and may be generalizable to other viral pathogens (e.g., coronavirus). This study suggests that virus is aerosolized from toilet flushing and may contribute to human exposure to viral pathogens.
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spelling pubmed-86516342021-12-08 Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing Boles, Corey Brown, Grant Nonnenmann, Matthew Sci Rep Article Murine norovirus (MNV) was used as a surrogate for human viral pathogens (e.g., norovirus) to determine if toilet flushing resulted in the aerosolization of virus. A flushometer type toilet was seeded with a viral solution of 10(5) and 10(6) PFU mL(-1) of MNV and then flushed. Upon flushing, two bioaerosol samplers were activated to collect aerosolized MNV. Prior to the experiment, two optical particle counters monitored particle size and number distribution of aerosol produced from flushing a toilet across height, position, and side. The location with the highest mean particle concentration, was behind the toilet and 0.15 m above the toilet bowl rim, which is where bioaerosol sampling occurred. Bioaerosol and toilet water samples were collected, extracted and then quantified using RT-ddPCR. The concentration of MNV collected after seeding the toilet water ranged from 2.18 × 10(5) to 9.65 × 10(6) total copies of MNV. Positive samples of airborne MNV were detected with collected concentrations ranging from 383 to 684 RNA copies/m(3) of air. This study provides evidence that viral pathogens may be aerosolized when a toilet is flushed. Furthermore, the MNV used in this study is a model organism for human norovirus and may be generalizable to other viral pathogens (e.g., coronavirus). This study suggests that virus is aerosolized from toilet flushing and may contribute to human exposure to viral pathogens. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8651634/ /pubmed/34876637 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02938-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Boles, Corey
Brown, Grant
Nonnenmann, Matthew
Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title_full Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title_fullStr Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title_full_unstemmed Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title_short Determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
title_sort determination of murine norovirus aerosol concentration during toilet flushing
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8651634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34876637
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02938-0
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