Indoor Air Quality and Potential Health Risk Impacts of Exposure to Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria in an Office Rooms in Southern Poland.

Ewa Brągoszewska,Izabela Biedroń

doi:10.3390/ijerph15112604

Abstract

The aims of this article are to characterize: the quantity of culturable bacterial aerosol (QCBA) and the quality of culturable bacterial aerosol (QlCBA) in an office building in Southern Poland during the spring. The average concentration of culturable bacterial aerosol (CCBA) in this building ranged from 424 CFU m−3 to 821 CFU m−3, below Polish proposals for threshold limit values. Size distributions were unimodal, with a peak of particle bacterial aerodynamic diameters less than 3.3 μm, increasing potentially adverse health effects due to their inhalation. The spring office exposure dose (SPED) of bacterial aerosol was estimated. The highest value of SPED was in April (218 CFU kg−1), whereas the lowest was in June (113 CFU kg−1). Analysis was undertaken to determine the antibiotic resistance of isolated strains and their ability to form biofilms, which may facilitate the spread of antibiotic resistance genes. In the course of the study, it was found that Staphylococcus xylosus had the greatest ability to form biofilms, while the strains with the highest antibiotic resistance were Micrococcus luteus D and Macrococcus equipercicus. Given that mainly antibiotic-sensitive bacteria from bioaerosol were isolated, which transfers resistance genes to their plasmids, this shows the need for increased monitoring of indoor air quality in workplaces.

Highlights

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has received increasing attention from environmental regulators concerned with improving the comfort, health, and wellbeing of building occupants [1]
The objectives of the present study are to characterize the quantity of culturable bacterial aerosol (QCBA) and the quality of culturable bacterial aerosol (QlCBA) present in office rooms in the Upper
The results of the Mann–Whitney U test showed that there was a significant difference between months (p < 0.05) such that only the difference between levels of bacterial aerosols collected in May versus June were statistically non-significant (p > 0.05)

Summary

Introduction

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has received increasing attention from environmental regulators concerned with improving the comfort, health, and wellbeing of building occupants [1]. The health risks from exposure to indoor air pollution may be greater than those related to outdoor pollution because people spend about 80–90% of their day in indoor environments, of which ~25% is spent at work [2,3,4,5,6]. Almost 30% of office workers complain of health problems, linking them with poor IAQ [7]. Exposure to biological agents in the work environment is associated with a wide range of health effects, including three major groups of diseases: infections, toxic and allergic reactions [8,9,10,11]. Employees in office buildings often share a small space containing a wide spectrum of microorganisms. Soil microbes from plants can be breathed in by office workers or can be transferred to dust particles from the outdoor air [12,13,14]

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Results

Conclusion