A Framework for Assessing the Health Hazard Posed by Bioaerosols (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 1-8
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From page 1... ...
First, ACPLA does not distinguish between "active" and "inactive" biological agents. (While the term "active" can have different meanings, for the purpose of this report the term is used as shorthand for the form of the biological agent that can cause harm -- live bacteria, infective viruses and active biotoxins.
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The complexity of the bioagent threat is such that there is only one relevant characteristic shared by all agents of interest: the capacity to interact with the human body and potentially cause harm. Thus, a unit of measure that considers the health hazard posed by a given concentration of aerosolized biological agent in air would allow comparison across all agent types against a characteristic that would have real utility both for test and evaluation of detectors and in the field.
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These measurements, in the case of bacteria and viruses, do provide useful information on biological activity -- a necessary condition to determine whether an agent is capable of producing an adverse biological outcome -- but they reflect fundamental biological differences of the different classes of agents and are not directly interconvertible. After a survey of the literature to identify units describing the concentration of biological aerosols, the committee concluded that no single unit of measure is available that could be used directly to compare the health hazard posed by different biological agents and the many forms in which they might be encountered in an attack.
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While this report focuses on biological warfare agents, the concepts presented can be applied to a broad range of airborne pathogens and biological toxins. Two critical factors determine the probability that a BWA aerosol exposure will produce an adverse health outcome -- the hazard posed by the agent and the physiological responses of the individuals exposed to it.
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BAULADae incorporates the key information needed to estimate health hazard. Because different threat agents pose different hazards, biologically active units would be measured and calculated differently for each threat agent.
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Accurate assessment of health hazard would require the generation of particle sizes that reflect different health hazards; the eventual goal would be to develop detectors capable of characterizing these physical characteristics of the aerosol. For now, improvements in the referee system are needed to obtain the particle size data identified in the equation.
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From page 7... ...
Overall, although the proposed BAULADae unit is more complex than the current ACPLA unit, BAULADae has the advantage both of providing a valid basis for comparison across all biological agents and, when incorporated into the broader risk framework, of providing an assessment with true operational value: the risk to health of those exposed to biowarfare agents. RECOMMENDATIONS Recommendation A: A unit of hazard should be adopted as part of the evaluative framework.
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From page 8... ...
E.2. Consider archiving raw data collected by deployed systems to guide future development of detectors through performance evaluation.
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