An Investigation of Airborne Bioaerosols and Endotoxins Present in Indoor Traditional Wet Markets before and after Operation in Taiwan: A Case Study

Abstract

Customers in Taiwan prefer to purchase fresh foods and household supplies at indoor traditional wet markets (TWMs). The health risk to indoor TWM staff exposed to bioaerosols needs to be evaluated, since these workers spend long periods of time in the market for stall preparation, selling, and stall cleaning. This study investigated the bioaerosols present in two indoor TWMs. The results showed that the cleaning process at Market A after operations, involving the use of an agitated waterspout, was able to decrease the concentration of bacterial bioaerosols (BBs) by an average of 64%, while at the same time increasing the concentration of fungal bioaerosols (FBs) by about 2.4 fold. The chemical sanitization process at Market B after operations was able to bring about average decreases of 30.8% in BBs and 19.2% in FBs, but the endotoxin concentration increased. Hotspots were found to be associated with vendors of fresh, live poultry and fresh, raw meat/seafood. Pseudomonas spp. and Clostridiumperfringens, both of which can be pathogenic, were found to be the dominant species present in these markets, making up 35.18% to 48.74% and 9.64% to 11.72% of the bacteria present, respectively. Our results provide fundamental information on the distributions of bioaerosols and endotoxins within indoor TWMs both before and after operation.