Three major hospitals with over 500 beds located in and near Seoul were surveyed for airbone microorganisms from February 1, 1998 to February 18, 1998. The purpose of the study was to identify and quantify microbiological organisms circulating in the air of three different areas in the hospitals. For the study, a RCS air sampler was utilized equipped with two different collection media, the agar strip GK-A for bacteria and the agar strip HS for fungi. The areas investigated were the intensive care unit (ICU) in the Department of internal medicine, the Newborns room in the Department of Obstetrics, and the microbiology laboratory. The results were as follows;
I The average numbers of general microbiological particles collected on the agar strip GK-A media were 205 CFU/㎥, 232 CFU/㎥, and 128 CFU/㎥ in each hospitals. The highest concentration of 387 CFU/㎥ was found in the ICU of A hospital at 15:00 during the clay. Further analysis of the collected bioaerosols by gram staining, revealed that there were grain positive cocci (89.5%), gram positive bacilli (7.2%), gram negative bacilli (2.8%), and fungi (0.5%), in descending order of frequency.
2. Ten different genes were identified from the agar strip GK-A. The most frequently identified organisms were: the Coagulase negative staphylococcus (55.%), Micrococcus (21.4%), Enterococcus species(10.4%), and Bacillus species (7.2%). A series of antibiotics susceptibility test were conducted against the aforementioned four(4) organisms. Ninety percent of coagulase negative stapylococcus were sensitive to Penicillins. Pathogenic microbes isolated include: Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter species, Klebsiella pneumonia, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Pseudomonas aeroginosa.
3 Although 56.8% of the microorganisms grown on the strip HS media for fungi could not be identified, some of them were successfully identified.
The most frequently found fungi were Aspergillus (35.3%), Yeast or Molds (6.2%), and Penicillium (0.7%).
Based on the results obtained from the study, it was concluded that some areas in the hospitals had abnormally high bioaerosol concentrations which could be attributed to human activity. Therefore, it is recommended that periodic assessments of indoor bioaerosols aiming to identify the possible sources should be conducted in order to maintain clean indoor environment in the hospitals.
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