SIZE AND COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSES OF BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE AEROSOLS FROM A CO₂ AND DIODE LASER PLUME

Modern medical procedures, including laser surgery, can generate fine aerosols that may carry biologically active agents. With such procedures becoming more commonplace, it is evident that we need to look at the health implications on hospital staff when dealing with highly contagious patients with bacterial and/or viral infections, such as AIDS. The focus of this study is not to determine what portion that population is actually harmful, only to deduce what segment is still biologically active after vaporization from tissues. We have developed procedures to collect and analyze aerosols by size (from >10 μm to less than 0.07 μm) and by time (from minutes to ~ 4 hour increments). Health relevant size cuts for aerosols in a work environment have been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization and the Comite of European de Normalisation. We examined both the nature of the aerosols generated and the efficiency of hospital masks used by personnel in screening aerosols and simulated conditions under which aerosols might be inhaled. Four sets of data were recorded: Mask filtered physical, mask filtered biological, unfiltered physical and unfiltered biological. A combination of PIXE analyses on impactor and filter samples were matched with filters and strips plated on agarose plates and counted for colony forming units to determine the biologically active subset of the population.