Inhalable Microorganisms in Beijing’s PM2.5 and PM10 Pollutants during a Severe Smog Event
By Chen Cao, Wenjun Jiang, Bu-ying Wang, Jianhuo Fang, Jidong Lang, Geng Tian, Jingkun Jiang, Ting F. Zhu. Environmental Science and Technology, 2014
652 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Particulate matter (PM) air pollution poses a formidable public health threat to the city of Beijing. Among the various hazards of PM pollutants, microorganisms in PM2.5 and PM10 are thought to be responsible for various allergies and for the spread of respiratory diseases. While the physical and chemical properties of PM pollutants have been extensively studied, much less is known about the inhalable microorganisms. Most existing data on airborne microbial communities using 16S or 18S rRNA gene sequencing to categorize bacteria or fungi into the family or genus levels do not provide information on their allergenic and pathogenic potentials. Here we employed metagenomic methods to analyze the microbial composition of Beijing’s PM pollutants during a severe January smog event. We show that with sufficient sequencing depth, airborne microbes including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and dsDNA viruses can be identified at the species level. Our results suggested that the majority of the inhalable microorganisms were soil-associated and nonpathogenic to human. Nevertheless, the sequences of several respiratory microbial allergens and pathogens were identified and their relative abundance appeared to have increased with increased concentrations of PM pollution. Our findings may serve as an important reference for environmental scientists, health workers, and city planners.
Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9843577c9c6912c075017b6f0bb1eb6b7dd3813e
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Citations in the corpus
- Past, present, and future perspectives of environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding: A systematic review in methods, monitoring, and applications of global eDNA (2019, background): “While particulate matter air pollution is well-understood, inhalable microorganisms have not been well studied, and most studies have been purposed for taxonomic identification rather than pathogenic potential (Cao et al., 2014).”
- Silk nanofibers as high efficient and lightweight air filter (2016, neutral): “It has been reported that bacteria account for more than 80% of the inhalable microorganisms in PM, which are responsible for the transmission of respiratory diseases and allergies [31], making air filters with antibacterial properties highly desired.”
- Geospatial Resolution of Human and Bacterial Diversity with City-Scale Metagenomics (2015, neutral): “…Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis,10 Nell Kirchberger,1,2 Isaac Garcia,1,2 David Gandara,1,2 Sean Dhanraj,7 Tanzina Nawrin,7 Yogesh Saletore,1,2,6 Noah Alexander,1,2 Priyanka Vijay,1,2,6 Elizabeth M. Hénaff,1,2 Paul Zumbo,1,2 Michael Walsh,11 Gregory D. O’Mullan,3 Scott Tighe,12 Joel T. Dudley,13 Anya…”