Bioaerosol emissions variations in large-scale landfill region and their health risk impacts

Highlights

● The airborne bacteria in landfills were 4–50 times higher than fungi.

● Bioaerosols released from the working area would pose risk to on-site workers.

● The safe distance for the working area should be set as 80 m.

Abstract

Landfills are widely complained about due to the long-term odor and landfill gas emissions for local residents, while the bioaerosols are always neglected as another threat to on-site workers. In this study, bioaerosols samples were collected from the typical operation scenes in the large-scale modern landfill, and the emission levels of airborne bacteria, pathogenic species, and fungi were quantified and co-related. The corresponding exposure risks were assessed based on the average daily dose via inhalation and skin contact. It was found that the levels of culturable bacteria and fungi in all landfill samples were around 33–22778 CFU/m³ and 8–450 CFU/m³, and the active-working landfill area and the covered area were the maximum and minimum emission sources, respectively, meaning that the bioaerosols were mainly released from the areas related with the fresh waste operation. Acinetobacter sp., Massilia sp., Methylobacterium-Methylorubrum sp. and Noviherbaspirillum sp. were the main bacterial populations, with a percentage of 42.56%, 89.82%, 70.24% and 30.20% respectively in total bioaerosols measured. With regards to the health risk, the health risks via inhalation were the main potential risks, with four orders of magnitude higher than that of skin contact. Active-working area showed the critical point for non-carcinogenic risks, with a hazard quotient of 1.68, where 80 m protection distance is recommended for on-site worker protection, plus more careful protection measures.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Microbial aerosols / Landfill sites / Health risk assessment / CALPUFF

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC1900704), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42077111), the Technology Innovation and Development Project of the Inner Mongolia Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) (No. 2021PT0045-02-01) and the Yunnan Erhai Lake Ecosystem, National Observation and Research Station (China).

CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement

Yanfeng Yang: Investigation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Ruina Zhang: Methodology, Visualization. Ziyang Lou: Resources, Supervision.

Declaration of Interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-022-1593-9 and is accessible for authorized users.

Abbreviation List

MSW	Municipal solid waste
ULW	Unloading wharf
TPR	Transportation road
AWA	Active working area
COA	Coverage area
LPA	Leachate pool area
TSP	Total suspended particles samplers
LB	Luria-Bertani
WRF	Weather research and forecasting
PD	Pathogen dose
HQ	Hazard quotient

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