Back

Aerial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus (and pathogens in general) through environmental e-cigarette aerosol

Sussman, R. A.; Golberstein, E.; Polosa, R.

2021-01-20 infectious diseases
10.1101/2020.11.21.20235283 medRxiv
Show abstract

We examine the plausibility, scope and risks of aerial transmission of pathogens (including the SARS-CoV-2 virus) through respiratory droplets carried by exhaled e-cigarette aerosol (ECA). Given the lack of empiric evidence, we consider cigarette smoking and mouth breathing through a mouthpiece as convenient proxies to infer the respiratory mechanics and droplets sizes and their rate of emission that should result from vaping. To quantify direct exposure distance we model exhaled ECA flow as an intermittent turbulent jet evolving into an unstable puff, estimating for low intensity vaping (practiced by 80-90% of vapers) the emission of 6-200 (mean 79.82, standard deviation 74.66) respiratory submicron droplets per puff a horizontal distance spread of 1-2 meters, with intense vaping possibly emitting up to 1000 droplets per puff in the submicron range a distance spread over 2 meters. Since exhaled ECA acts effectively as a visual tracer of its expiratory flow, bystanders become instinctively aware that possible direct contagion might occur only in the direction and scope of the jet.

Published in Qeios · not in our set (fewer than 10 published preprints to learn from) · training set

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.