Ventilation control for airborne transmission of human exhaled bio-aerosols in buildings
Open accessAbstract
The emergence of respiratory diseases, i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003, H1N1 influenza epidemic in 2011 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak, reiterated the significance of ventilation in buildings. The role of ventilation in removing exhaled airborne bio-aerosols and preventing cross infections has been multidisciplinary extensively studied after the SARS outbreak in 2003. The characteristics of droplet-borne, short-range airborne and long-range airborne transmission of infectious diseases were identified. Increasing ventilation rate can effectively reduce the risk of long-range airborne transmission, while it may be of little useful in preventing the droplet-borne transmission. To maintain the airflow direction from clean cubicles to dirty cubicles is an effective way to prevent the cross infection between cubicles, which is widely used in hospital isolation rooms. Field measurements showed that wrong air flow direction was due to poor construction quality or maintenance. The impacts of different airflow patterns on removing large droplets and fine droplet nuclei were discussed. Some new concepts in general ventilation systems and local personalized equipment were also introduced. This review updates current knowledge of the airborne transmission of pathogens and the improvement of ventilation efficiency concerning the infection prevention.
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Building-level strategies are key to reducing the spread of airborne infectious diseases.
“showing that building-level strategies are key to reducing the spread of airborne infectious diseases.40, 127, 401, 402, 403”
From The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as [403]
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- Authors
- Qian, H., & Zheng, X.
- Affiliations
- Southeast University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Qian, Hua
- Venue
- Journal of Thoracic Disease
- Publisher
- AME Publishing Company
- Published
- 2018-07
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- S9
- Pages
- S2295-S2304
- ISSN
- 2072-1439 (ISSN-L)
- 2077-6624
- PMC
- PMC6072925
- OpenAlex
- W2787537960
- Cited by
- 249
- References
- 75
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 46 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 4.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Journal of Thoracic Disease (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (51378103)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Infection Control and Ventilation
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Indoor Air Quality and Microbial Exposure
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Infection Control in Healthcare
- Keywords
- ventilation control, airborne transmission, respiratory infections, airflow direction, cross-infection prevention, hospital isolation rooms, ventilation rate, droplet nuclei, SARS, influenza, MERS
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