Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Abstract

Bio aerosols are generally characterized as biological particles suspended in the air. Mechanical, Physical and seasonal factors affect the concentration of bio aerosols released from composting plants and thus, the exposure of workers. The morphological and biochemical differences between different microorganisms may affect their potential to be aerosolized, although this phenomenon has not been well described. From this perspective, differential aerosolization of certain pathogenic microbes found in compost deserves to be studied in order to better understand the factors involved in occupational exposure. The goal of this study was to explore, using next generation sequencing, the preferential aerosolization of microorganisms in different composting plants and see if the compost microbial population and diversity differs from that of bio aerosols. Results suggest that Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria constituted the major phyla of bacteria found in bio aerosols released from compost. There is an obvious link between microorganisms found in the air and in compost samples. However, some phyla seem enriched in the air when compared to their proportion in compost whereas; others are preferentially kept in the compost, suggesting anon-random aerosolization process. Using MiSeq Illumina sequencing technology, this study suggests the preferential aerosolization of Actinobacteria and more specifically genera like Saccharopolyspora, Mycobacterium and for some Proteobacteria such as Legionella. Some phyla are also under represented in aerosols and do not seem to be easily aerosolized such as Pseudomonas sp. Exposure to preferentially aerosolized pathogenic bio aerosols may be a potential source of occupational risk and evaluation of the sources microbial content (compost) is not a good proxy of workers’ exposure to bio aerosols.

Biography

Hamza M’Bareche, obtained his BSc in Microbiology in 2014 at Laval University, Quebec City. During his studies, he achieved a 15 week research project in Prof. Caroline Duchaine’s laboratory and he got passionate about bio-aérosols and human exposure. Currently, he is completing a master’s degree program in the Department of Microbiology within the same team. He started the project in May 2014 and he is doing a fast track to a PhD. Moreover, he is involved in two projects and he is presenting one of them at the Occupational health and Safety congress. He received a scholarship from the RSR to spend a training period of 4 Weeks in the Canadian Food Inspection agency, Ontario, Canada, to learn bioinformatics skills for the sake of his master project.

Email: hamza.mbareche@criucpq.ulaval.ca