Premium
Setting Risk‐Informed Environmental Standards for Bacillus Anthracis Spores
Author(s) -
Hong Tao,
Gurian Patrick L.,
Ward Nicholas F. Dudley
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01443.x
Subject(s) - bacillus anthracis , environmental science , spore , hazardous waste , risk assessment , environmental health , aerosol , aerosolization , human health , risk analysis (engineering) , toxicology , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , medicine , waste management , engineering , meteorology , bacteria , computer science , geography , computer security , genetics , anatomy , inhalation
In many cases, human health risk from biological agents is associated with aerosol exposures. Because air concentrations decline rapidly after a release, it may be necessary to use concentrations found in other environmental media to infer future or past aerosol exposures. This article presents an approach for linking environmental concentrations of Bacillus. anthracis ( B. anthracis ) spores on walls, floors, ventilation system filters, and in human nasal passages with human health risk from exposure to B. anthracis spores. This approach is then used to calculate example values of risk‐informed concentration standards for both retrospective risk mitigation (e.g., prophylactic antibiotics) and prospective risk mitigation (e.g., environmental clean up and reoccupancy). A large number of assumptions are required to calculate these values, and the resulting values have large uncertainties associated with them. The values calculated here suggest that documenting compliance with risks in the range of 10 −4 to 10 −6 would be challenging for small diameter (respirable) spore particles. For less stringent risk targets and for releases of larger diameter particles (which are less respirable and hence less hazardous), environmental sampling would be more promising.