bioaerosols & atmosphere pollutants

Welcome

Air-quality represents an interesting aspect and one of the important problem for public health.

Outdoor and indoor air pollution arises from various sources of contamination, as a result of natural and/or antropogenic processes and closely linked to the personal activities of the occupants, to working activities, pollutants concentrations in the air in damp and poorly or inadequate ventilated buildings, as well as industrial environments where plant, animal, or microbial products are handled, building materials, furnishings, products and cleaning methods.

Actually, validated methods for measuring exposure to airborne chemical and biological agents use static samplers and analytical techniques that provide an off-line and time-averaged response. For the biological component, passive sampling is used, based on the pathogen ability to proliferate in a culture medium for a few days, to inoculate it in reference cell cultures, or in the case of viral agents in the detection of specific antibodies, or by genetic amplification. In any case, post-evaluations are sometimes time-consuming and insensitive.

The existing direct reading instruments hardly meet the requirements for the evaluation and prevention of exposure to dangerous bioaerosol and atmosphere pollutants.

These limitations have been and still are a stimulus to search complementary and /or competitive solutions. In fact, the advances in material sciences and in nanotechnology, combined with the large use of automatic recognition algorithms, offer the advantages due to the miniaturization of sensing devices, leading to rapid, portable, and sensitive diagnostic systems that can detect the air-quality in various workplaces and public spaces.

In these two days, we will take stock of the criticalities and will discuss potential innovative solutions and technological advances in air-quality monitoring. Researchers and experts of the field will share their results and will compare with the Authority demands and the industrial reality of the territory.