Department of Underground Research and Surface Maintenance, Central Mining Institute, Podleska 72, 43-190 Mikołów, Poland.
Silesian Centre for Environmental Radioactivity, Central Mining Institute, Plac Gwarków 1, 40-166 Katowice, Poland.
Molecules. 2022 Jun 17;27(12):3896. doi: 10.3390/molecules27123896.
Aerosol transmission constitutes one of the major transmission routes of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Due to the pathogen's properties, research on its airborne transmission has some limitations. This paper focuses on silica nanoparticles (SiO) of 40 and 200 nm sizes as the physicochemical markers of a single SARS-CoV-2 particle enabling experiments on the transmission of bioaerosols in public spaces. Mixtures of a determined silica concentration were sprayed on as an aerosol, whose particles, sedimented on dedicated matrices, were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Since it was not possible to quantitatively identify the markers based on the obtained images, the filters exposed with the AirSampler aspirator were analyzed based on inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The ICP-OES method enabled us to determine the concentration of silica after extracting the marker from the filter, and consequently to estimate the number of markers. The developed procedure opens up the possibility of the quantitative estimation of the spread of the coronavirus, for example in studies on the aerosol transmission of the pathogen in an open environment where biological markers-surrogates included-cannot be used.
气溶胶传播是 SARS-CoV-2 病原体的主要传播途径之一。由于病原体的特性，对其空气传播的研究存在一些局限性。本文以 40nm 和 200nm 两种粒径的二氧化硅纳米颗粒（SiO）作为单个 SARS-CoV-2 颗粒的物理化学标志物，用于研究公共空间中生物气溶胶的传播。将一定浓度的二氧化硅混合物以气溶胶的形式喷雾，其颗粒在专用基质上沉降，然后用扫描电子显微镜（SEM）和透射电子显微镜（TEM）进行检查。由于无法根据获得的图像对标记物进行定量识别，因此根据 AirSampler 吸气器暴露的过滤器进行了电感耦合等离子体发射光谱（ICP-OES）分析。ICP-OES 方法使我们能够在从过滤器中提取标记物后确定二氧化硅的浓度，从而估计标记物的数量。该方法为定量估计冠状病毒的传播开辟了可能性，例如在开放环境中对病原体的气溶胶传播进行研究时，在这种环境中不能使用包括生物标记物替代品在内的生物标志物。
