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To: Dark Wing
You find out that simple things like pipetting or slide preparation are sufficient to aersolize Ebola.

I'm a PhD trained medical researcher. I know how samples are aerosolized by many common laboratory procedures. I remember when I used to centrifuge 35-S labeled samples, I gave up trying to keep them from aerosolizing--no matter what I did, I had to budget an hour or so to clean the radioactivity off the entire interior of the centrifuge every time I did that experiment. And I used sealed tubes and a lid on the rotor.

When I speak of Ebola not being an airborne virus, I am speaking strictly of the natural processes that viruses use to become airborne from the upper respiratory passages of an infected patient. This is the kind of transmission that makes the difference between Ebola remaining a regional outbreak, or its jumping to affect the whole world. If it could spread through natural aerosol routes, it would be all over the world by now.

The aerosols that occur as a result of, for instance, popping open an Eppendorf centrifuge tube, typically occur in the [BSL-4] laboratory environment, which is disinfected on a regular basis and is not open to the outside air. Certain procedures done with patients also can create aerosols--again, these happen in a controlled environment, and are not a consideration for disease transmission outside of the health-care setting.

2,198 posted on 09/18/2014 7:29:45 PM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: All
Calm down. There are definitional issues here.

Airborne transmissibility by an Ebola sufferer's EXhalation of tiny particles originating in the lungs is not the same as airborne transmissibility via a new victim's INhalation of larger particles originating in an existing victim's esophagus and trachea.

The CIDRAP study linked in Black Agne's post No. 2160 properly states that the respective ranges of tiny Ebola-laden particles emitted from the lungs and larger particles originating in the esophagus and trachea form a continuum rather than a barrier. The larger particles mostly fall out of the air due to gravity about three feet from the emitting victim, but not all do. Some waft around for a fair distance, and can contaminate inert surfaces (fomites). Smaller particles hang around for longer and can go farther, which makes them really, really dangerous.

2,200 posted on 09/18/2014 7:52:40 PM PDT by Thud
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