Abstract

Reviews of the effects of solar UV radiation on the survival rate of aerosolized biological material found that the current understanding of environmental viability degradation in response scenarios is insufficient to inform appropriate emergency response measures. We evaluated the effects of UV degradation, in terms of the number of viable, culture forming units as a function of spore cluster size on the downwind hazard presented by a release of a biological organism such as Bacillus anthracis into the environment. We used experimentally derived survival rates for B. atrophaeus var. globigii (BG) spores and BG spore clusters (as a surrogate for Bacillus anthracis) of various sizes exposed to UVC fluences to derive predicted survival rates for single spores and spore clusters of up to 10 µm. For the range of weather conditions encountered in hazard estimates, as characterized by Pasquill-Gifford-Turner classes, we calculated and compared the downwind inhalation and deposition hazards for single spores ver...

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