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Airborne Bacterial Exposure At Workers' Breathing Height In An Organic Farm Of Rural Georgia, Tedd Gandy, Nabanita Mukherjee, Bushra Shah, Subhrajit K. Saha, Pratik Banerjee, Atin Adhikari

GS4 Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium

Organic farming has potentials to contribute substantially to future sustainable agricultural production by improving soil quality, pest control, and reduction of adverse environmental impacts in rural agricultural communities. On the other hand, application of natural farmyard manure may increase the microbial biomass in this environment and consequently microbial exposure levels among workers could be increased. To explore this possibility of excess exposure, particularly to airborne bacteria, we conducted air sampling at the vicinity of poultry and dairy sections of a large organic farm in a rural Georgia location. For air sampling, a Biostage viable cascade impactor was utilized, which comprises …