Variation in fluorescent biological aerosol particles over the urban area during Asian dust events

Dust events over East Asia carry bioaerosols, such as bacteria, fungi, pollen, and plant-animal cell debris, as well as mineral and sea salt. The long-distance dispersion of bioaerosols have possibilities to damage human health due to pathogenic diseases and allergy induction. The microbial communities and biological components in bioaerosols have been investigated using offline analysis, such as DNA sequencing and chromatograph mass-spectrometry, but the contrast of offline databases are insufficiently used for establishing of bioaerosol models offline with chemical and physical database.

Recently, wideband integrated bioaerosol sensors (WIBSs), which detecting autofluorescence emitted from amino acids, proteins, and coenzymes, is focused as online analysis of bioaerosols. However, during the WIBSs monitoring, the interference from other types of fluorescent particles (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) hardly identify the biological molecular species in bioaerosols. Here, for identifying the bioaerosol composition detected by the WIBSs, the bioaerosol surveys during Asian dust events at Osaka city, Japan, were performed by combining online (WIBS) and offline (DNA-sequencing and microscopic observation) techniques. The comparisons between online and offline data revealed that some types of fluorescent spectrum can determine the concentrations of pollen and fungal cells, which vary in correspondence to dust events as well as seasonal changes and wind directions.