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Abstract
This study investigated airborne bacteria in a university research laboratory during operation of an acoustic-enhanced flow cytometer for antimicrobial susceptibility testing by sampling room air before, during and after flow cytometer use. Air sampling in a nearby clinical laboratory was conducted for comparison during the same period. The three species of bacteria undergoing analysis by flow cytometry were Klebsiella pneumoniae, Burkholderia thailandensis and Streptococcus pneumoniae. These species were not detected from multiple 1000 L air samples acquired in the confined research laboratory environment. The main cultured bacteria were skin commensal and environmental bacteria, presumed to have been disturbed or dispersed in laboratory air by personnel movements during routine laboratory operation. The concentrations of bacteria detected in air samples were reduced after laboratory cleaning measures were introduced and were lower than those in a diagnostic clinical microbiology laboratory located nearby on the same biomedical campus.
Highlights
Flow cytometry techniques have been used to analyse bacteria for several decades[1,2], and for assessing the effects of antimicrobial agents since the 1980s3–5
Concerns about laboratory biosafety and containment increased after 20017,8 and led to higher physical containment levels for select biothreat agents and some bacterial species prone to transmission by aerosols generated during laboratory procedures such as Neisseria meningitidis[9,10]
The bacteria isolated from over 50,000 L of air sampled in the research laboratory before, during and after flow cytometer operation did not yield a single cultured colony of K. pneumoniae, S. pneumoniae or B. thailandensis (Table 1A, Table 1B)
Summary
Flow cytometry techniques have been used to analyse bacteria for several decades[1,2], and for assessing the effects of antimicrobial agents since the 1980s3–5. Concerns about laboratory biosafety and containment increased after 20017,8 and led to higher physical containment levels for select biothreat agents and some bacterial species prone to transmission by aerosols generated during laboratory procedures such as Neisseria meningitidis[9,10]. Given these concerns about bioaerosol transmission risks, it is not surprising that standards for bioaerosol risk assessment and mitigation have been recommended for flow cytometry-assisted cell sorting protocols[11,12]. Though the cytometer we used had no cell sorting function, we decided to conduct an assessment of its ability to generate bacterial aerosols before progressing with any analysis of potentially more hazardous aerosol-transmitted species such as Neisseria meningitidis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Burkholderia pseudomallei
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