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Link to original content: http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35404579/
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. 2022 May 3;56(9):5641-5652.
doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c08342. Epub 2022 Apr 11.

Modeling Clothing as a Vector for Transporting Airborne Particles and Pathogens across Indoor Microenvironments

Jacob Kvasnicka  1 , Elaine A Cohen Hubal  2 , Jeffrey A Siegel  3   4 , James A Scott  4   5 , Miriam L Diamond  1   4   6
Affiliations

Modeling Clothing as a Vector for Transporting Airborne Particles and Pathogens across Indoor Microenvironments

Jacob Kvasnicka et al. Environ Sci Technol. .

Abstract

Evidence suggests that human exposure to airborne particles and associated contaminants, including respiratory pathogens, can persist beyond a single microenvironment. By accumulating such contaminants from air, clothing may function as a transport vector and source of "secondary exposure". To investigate this function, a novel microenvironmental exposure modeling framework (ABICAM) was developed. This framework was applied to a para-occupational exposure scenario involving the deposition of viable SARS-CoV-2 in respiratory particles (0.5-20 μm) from a primary source onto clothing in a nonhealthcare setting and subsequent resuspension and secondary exposure in a car and home. Variability was assessed through Monte Carlo simulations. The total volume of infectious particles on the occupant's clothing immediately after work was 4800 μm3 (5th-95th percentiles: 870-32 000 μm3). This value was 61% (5-95%: 17-300%) of the occupant's primary inhalation exposure in the workplace while unmasked. By arrival at the occupant's home after a car commute, relatively rapid viral inactivation on cotton clothing had reduced the infectious volume on clothing by 80% (5-95%: 26-99%). Secondary inhalation exposure (after work) was low in the absence of close proximity and physical contact with contaminated clothing. In comparison, the average primary inhalation exposure in the workplace was higher by about 2-3 orders of magnitude. It remains theoretically possible that resuspension and physical contact with contaminated clothing can occasionally transmit SARS-CoV-2 between humans.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; aerosol; clothing; droplet; microenvironment; near-field exposure; para-occupational human exposure; particle resuspension; virus.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of ABICAM’s time-dependent matrices of rate coefficients for indoor microenvironments. (A) A “master schedule” maps the activities of two arbitrary human occupants (H1 and H2) to specific time periods. To illustrate, each activity period is represented by a superellipse with length directly proportional to duration. (B) For a given contaminant (c), each indoor microenvironment is associated with a matrix [Kec(t) in eq 1]. The size of each matrix reflects the total number of compartments in the microenvironment and therefore changes as human occupants enter and leave. In this example, H1 moves from Env1 to Env2 as time progresses from period 1 to period 2, while H2 remains in Env1. Rate coefficients [T–1] for contaminant mass transfer (→) and removal (rem) are denoted by k with subscripts, nf, ff, x, and y referring to near-field, far-field, and arbitrary environmental and human compartments, respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Time-average concentrations of infectious particles and corresponding exposures for each indoor microenvironment and human occupant. For a given microenvironment, airborne concentrations correspond to either the far-field (FF) or near-field of a given human occupant (HF or HM). “OA” and “RC” refer to the car ventilation scenarios of outside air intake (windows closed) and recirculation, respectively. For the home, results are shown for the RC scenario (differences in medians between scenarios were <10%). Boxes extend from the first to third quartile values of predictions, with a line at the median. Whiskers are truncated at the 5th and 95th percentiles.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Distributions of primary versus secondary exposure to infectious particles. Secondary exposure distributions represent cumulative inhalation exposures to resuspended particles, deposited from the primary source, across the car and home microenvironments. The distribution of infectious particles on clothing is the final condition while in the workplace and represents infectious particles available for secondary exposure. “HF” and “HM” refer to the human female and male adult occupants, respectively. “OA” and “RC” refer to the car ventilation scenarios of outside air intake (windows closed) and recirculation, respectively. Horizontal lines indicate the 50th and 95th percentiles.
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