Clothing Spreads Spores--2001 article

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Thought some of you might like to read this one. This article was published in

Environmental Health Perspectives, August 2001.

Mycotoxins--Clothing Spreads Spores

Hospital patients who are immunocompromised, for example due to AIDS,

chemotherapy, or organ transplants, are highly susceptible to opportunistic

fungal infections caused by inhaling spores of the fungus Aspergillus.

Spore-related illnesses such as pulmonary aspergillosis can account for up to

40% of deaths among leukemia patients. If bone marrow transplant patients become

infected, the death rate may exceed 90%. Infectious disease specialists know

that bacteria can spread disease via contaminated clothing. Recently,

researchers published the first research showing that clothing also spreads

Aspergillus spores.

“Clothing can create a microenvironment where contaminants are sloughed off very

close to a patient, yet an air monitoring system would not pick up a local

problem,” says Betsy Dart, a protective clothing consultant at Arthur D. Little,

a research and development consulting firm in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1998 and 1999, Dart—then a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca,

New York—and Cornell textiles professor Kay Obendorf examined how seven types of

fabric harbor and disperse Aspergillus spores. They found that cotton fabric

spreads spores better than other fabrics. Their findings were published in 2000

by the American Society for Testing and Materials in a collection of papers

titled Performance of Protective Clothing: Issues and Priorities for the 21st

Century, Seventh Volume.

The researchers deposited a known number of spores on swatches of cotton,

polyester, rayon, and lycocell (sold as Tencel) in a specially built

contamination chamber. The fabrics were exposed for 2 minutes to a mild airflow

(2.5 L/min), equivalent to the gentle breeze generated during a slow bike ride.

Photomicrographs taken with a scanning electron microscope revealed that

cotton’s surface morphology—the physical structure of its fibers—favors the

retention and slow release of spores. The cotton fibers twist and cross each

other, making “lots of little concave hiding places of just the right diameter

to catch spores,” says Dart. (In contrast, rayon, polyester, and lycocell fibers

appear smoother, with less contact area for spores.) In addition, cotton can

soak up more moisture, which reduces static electrical attractions between the

spores and the fabric; cotton therefore has a greater propensity than other

fabrics for releasing spores, says

Dart.

Extrapolating from their laboratory tests, the researchers theorize that simply

walking into a patient’s room can dislodge spores that cling to visitors’

clothing. " Hugging, kissing, sitting on a patient’s bed, or pulling up a chair

creates air turbulence and friction within and around fabric, releasing

potentially deadly spores,” says Obendorf. The researchers recommend that

visitors and staff wear protective gowns, caps, and shoe coverings near

immunocompromised patients. Laundering effectively removes Aspergillus spores,

so hospital-laundered protective garments could significantly reduce the risk of

infection.

In an unpublished study, Streifel, a hospital environmental specialist at

the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who also has studied this

spore-carrying phenomenon, compared clinical Aspergillus isolates recovered from

pediatric versus adult bone marrow transplant patients. Pediatric patients had a

greater Aspergillus isolate recovery, probably because “family and staff hold

children in close contact, and spores pass from clothing to patients,”

postulates Streifel. The Cornell researchers’ study “finally puts science behind

our observations,” he says.

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