ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Evidence for a semisolid phase state of aerosols and droplets relevant to the airborne and surface survival of pathogens.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Electrolyzed water for the microbiologic control in the pandemic dental setting: a systematic review.BMC oral health · 2022Pooled it
- Influence of Carbon Dioxide and pH on Influenza Virus in Sessile Saliva Droplets.Environmental science & technology · 2026Article
- The Selective Detection of Individual Respiratory Droplets in Air.ACS sensors · 2026Article
- Article
- Understanding Aerosol-Mediated Disease Transmission.ACS central science · 2025Review
- Ratiometric Optical Sensing of Aerosol Phase State with Excited-State Intramolecular Proton Transfer Probes.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- SARS-CoV-2 dynamics in New York City during March 2020-August 2023.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Mucin Colocalizes with Influenza Virus and Preserves Infectivity in Deposited Model Respiratory Droplets.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Open-set deep learning-enabled single-cell Raman spectroscopy for rapid identification of airborne pathogens in real-world environments.Science advances · 2025Article
- Persistence of Phi6, a SARS-CoV-2 surrogate, in simulated indoor environments: Effects of humidity and material properties.PloS one · 2025Article
- Aerosol Fluorescent Labeling via Probe Molecule Volatilization.Analytical chemistry · 2024Article
- Unraveling the impact of operational parameters and environmental conditions on the quality of viable bacterial aerosols.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Impact of organic compounds on the stability of influenza A virus in deposited 1-μL droplets.mSphere · 2024Article
- Review of factors affecting virus inactivation in aerosols and droplets.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Review
- Laboratory studies on the infectivity of human respiratory viruses: Experimental conditions, detections, and resistance to the atmospheric environment.Fundamental research · 2024Review
- The microphysics of surrogates of exhaled aerosols from the upper respiratory tract.Aerosol science and technology : the journal of the American Association for Aerosol Research · 2024Article
- Exposure to urban nanoparticles at low PM[Formula: see text] concentrations as a source of oxidative stress and inflammation.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Stability of Aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 on Masks and Transfer to Skin.Environmental science & technology · 2023Article
- Differences in airborne stability of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern is impacted by alkalinity of surrogates of respiratory aerosol.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The phase state of respiratory aerosols and droplets has been linked to the humidity-dependent survival of pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. To inform strategies to mitigate the spread of infectious disease, it is thus necessary to understand the humidity-dependent phase changes associated with the particles in which pathogens are suspended. Here, we study phase changes of levitated aerosols and droplets composed of model respiratory compounds (salt and protein) and growth media (organic-inorganic mixtures commonly used in studies of pathogen survival) with decreasing relative humidity (RH). Efflorescence was suppressed in many particle compositions and thus unlikely to fully account for the humidity-dependent survival of viruses. Rather, we identify organic-based, semisolid phase states that form under equilibrium conditions at intermediate RH (45 to 80%). A higher-protein content causes particles to exist in a semisolid state under a wider range of RH conditions. Diffusion and, thus, disinfection kinetics are expected to be inhibited in these semisolid states. These observations suggest that organic-based, semisolid states are an important consideration to account for the recovery of virus viability at low RH observed in previous studies. We propose a mechanism in which the semisolid phase shields pathogens from inactivation by hindering the diffusion of solutes. This suggests that the exogenous lifetime of pathogens will depend, in part, on the organic composition of the carrier respiratory particle and thus its origin in the respiratory tract. Furthermore, this work highlights the importance of accounting for spatial heterogeneities and time-dependent changes in the properties of aerosols and droplets undergoing evaporation in studies of pathogen viability.
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