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Poor ventilation worsens short‐range airborne transmission of respiratory infection
- Source :
- Indoor Air
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Hindawi Limited, 2021.
-
Abstract
- To explain the observed phenomenon that most SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission occurs indoors whereas its outdoor transmission is rare, a simple macroscopic aerosol balance model is developed to link short‐ and long‐range airborne transmission. The model considers the involvement of exhaled droplets with initial diameter ≤50 µm in the short‐range airborne route, whereas only a fraction of these droplets with an initial diameter within 15 µm or equivalently a final diameter within 5 µm considered in the long‐range airborne route. One surprising finding is that the room ventilation rate significantly affects the short‐range airborne route, in contrast to traditional belief. When the ventilation rate in a room is insufficient, the airborne infection risks due to both short‐ and long‐range transmission are high. A ventilation rate of 10 L/s per person provides a similar concentration vs distance decay profile to that in outdoor settings, which provides additional justification for the widely adopted ventilation standard of 10 L/s per person. The newly obtained data do not support the basic assumption in the existing ventilation standard ASHRAE 62.1 (2019) that the required people outdoor air rate is constant if the standard is used directly for respiratory infection control. Instead, it is necessary to increase the ventilation rate when the physical distance between people is less than approximately 2 m.
- Subjects :
- Environmental Engineering
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Air Microbiology
Airborne transmission
SARS‐CoV‐2
law.invention
close contact
respiratory infection
law
Statistics
ASHRAE 90.1
Range (statistics)
Humans
long‐range airborne transmission
Respiratory Tract Infections
Aerosols
SARS-CoV-2
ventilation
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
COVID-19
Respiratory infection
Original Articles
Building and Construction
short‐range airborne transmission
expired jet
Aerosol
Transmission (telecommunications)
Air Pollution, Indoor
Ventilation (architecture)
Environmental science
Original Article
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 16000668 and 09056947
- Volume :
- 32
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Indoor Air
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6499b687b3b0f79f5a77218b76a4936e