Department of Transportation Environmental Research, Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI), Uiwang, 16105, Republic of Korea.
Transportation System Engineering, University of Science and Technology (UST), Daejeon, 34113, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2024 Mar 18;14(1):6478. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-49848-x.
Health implications of indoor air quality (IAQ) have drawn more attention since the COVID epidemic. There are many different kinds of studies done on how IAQ affects people's well-being. There hasn't been much research that looks at the microbiological composition of the aerosol in subway transit systems. In this work, for the first time, we examined the aerosol bacterial abundance, diversity, and composition in the microbiome of the Seoul subway and train stations using DNA isolated from the PM samples from each station (three subway and two KTX stations). The average PM mass concentration collected on the respective platform was 41.862 µg/m, with the highest average value of 45.95 µg/m and the lowest of 39.25 µg/m. The bacterial microbiomes mainly constituted bacterial species of soil and environmental origin (e.g., Acinetobacter, Brevundimonas, Lysinibacillus, Clostridiodes) with fewer from human sources (Flaviflexus, Staphylococcus). This study highlights the relationship between microbiome diversity and PM mass concentration contributed by outdoor air and commuters in South Korea's subway and train stations. This study gives insights into the microbiome diversity, the source, and the susceptibility of public transports in disease spreading.
室内空气质量 (IAQ) 对健康的影响自新冠疫情以来受到了更多关注。有许多不同类型的研究探讨了 IAQ 如何影响人们的健康。但是，对于地铁交通系统气溶胶中的微生物组成，还没有太多的研究。在这项工作中，我们首次使用从每个站点的 PM 样本中分离出的 DNA，研究了首尔地铁和火车站的气溶胶细菌丰度、多样性和组成（三个地铁站和两个 KTX 站）。分别在各自站台收集的 PM 质量浓度的平均值为 41.862µg/m，最高平均值为 45.95µg/m，最低平均值为 39.25µg/m。细菌微生物组主要由土壤和环境来源的细菌物种组成（例如，不动杆菌、短小杆菌、赖氨酸芽孢杆菌、梭菌），而来自人类的细菌物种较少（黄杆菌、葡萄球菌）。本研究强调了微生物组多样性与户外空气和韩国地铁和火车站乘客贡献的 PM 质量浓度之间的关系。这项研究为了解公共交通在疾病传播中的微生物多样性、来源和易感性提供了新的视角。
