Fungal Bioaerosols at Five Dairy Farms: A Novel Approach to Describe Workers’ Exposure
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Occupational exposure to harmful bioaerosols in industrial environments is a real treat to the workers. In particular, dairy-farm workers are exposed to high levels of fungal bioaerosols on a daily basis. Associating bioaerosol exposure and health problems is challenging and adequate exposure monitoring is a top priority for aerosol scientists. Using only culture-based tools do not express the overall microbial diversity and underestimate the large spectrum of microbes in bioaerosols and therefore the identification of new airborne etiological agents. The aim of this study was to provide an in-depth characterization of fungal exposure at Eastern Canadian dairy farms using qPCR and next-generation sequencing methods. Concentrations of Penicillium/Aspergillus ranged from 4.6 × 10 6 to 9.4 × 10 6 gene copies/m 3 and from 1 × 10 4 gene copies/m 3 to 4.8 × 10 5 gene copies/m 3 for Aspergillus fumigatus . Differences in the diversity profiles of the five dairy farms support the idea that the novel approach identifies a large number of fungal taxa. These variations may be explained by the presence of different and multiple sources of fungal bioaerosols at dairy farms. The presence of a diverse portrait of fungi in air may represent a health risk for workers who are exposed on a daily basis. In some cases, the allergen/infective activity of the fungi may not be known and can increase the risks to workers. The broad spectrum of fungi detected in this study includes many known pathogens and proves that adequate monitoring of bioaerosol exposure is necessary to evaluate and minimize risks. Importance While bioaerosols are a major concern for public health, accurately assessing human exposure is challenging. Highly contaminated environments, such as agricultural facilities, contain a broad diversity of aerosolized fungi that may impact human health. Effective bioaerosol monitoring is increasingly recognized as a strategic approach for achieving occupational exposure description. Workers exposure to diverse fungal communities is certain, as fungi are ubiquitous in the environments and the presence of potential sources increase their presence in the air. Applying new molecular approaches to describe occupational exposure is a necessary work around the traditional culture approaches and the biases they introduce to such studies. The importance of the newly developed approach can help to prevent worker’s health problems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".