Impaction‐based Sampler for Detecting Male‐specific Coliphages in Bioaerosols

Air quality within and around confined animal housing operations is important from both occupational exposure and environmental quality perspectives. Appropriate sampling equipment should be available so that bioaerosols are adequately characterized in terms of their component microbial populations. In this study the efficacy of a commercially available impaction‐based bioaerosol sampler (SAS‐100) was evaluated in terms of its ability to detect male‐specific coliphages within and around poultry broiler houses. In addition to the manufacturer recommended agar medium, cellulose and cellulose‐acetate filter media were also used as the collection surface. The agar medium and the cellulose ester filters provided very high recoveries of phages as compared to the cellulose filter (P<0.05). There was a wide range of recoveries ranging from 0–100% when the cellulose acetate filter was used to detect phages in bioaerosols within and around broiler houses. The results suggest that the sampler is capable of concentrating male‐specific coliphages from bioaerosols. However, further studies are still needed to accurately determine the collection efficiencies of viruses.