Monitoring of Bioaerosol Emission from a Sludge Composting Facility

This paper presents results of one-year monitoring of bioaerosol dispersion from a full-scale sludge composting facility in the east coast of the USA. By using two-stage Andersen air samplers with a sequential sampling procedure developed in this study, a total of 24 sets of bioaerosol samples were collected on petri dishes for plate counting. The sampling program utilized a computer air dispersion model (ISCST) to predict the downwind distance at the maximum concentration. Field samplings were performed at upwind, onsite, and predicted downwind locations. The results of this study conclude that the 95% confidence intervals esti- mated for the background concentrations were: 75-173 cfu/m