Air sampler

A low-cost, simple, portable, electrostatic sampling device has been created at the ARS Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, for high-efficiency sampling of airborne bacteria, viruses, and spores.

The compact, 2-pound device, developed by agricultural engineer Bailey Mitchell and his colleagues, pulls air and dust particles into it for sampling. “The device samples about 212 cubic feet an hour - enough to sample all the air in a small office in about 2 hours,” said Mitchell.

The battery-operated device is housed in a waterproof enclosure, allowing disinfection after use. “It’s completely sealed and self-contained,” said Mitchell, “so it’s easy to clean and disinfect - very important for ensuring accurate sampling.”

The sampler has good potential for detecting microorganisms present in numbers too small to be recovered by traditional methods, such as swab or serum sampling.

The electrostatic sampling device has been tested extensively in clean lab areas, in exhaust air from poultry houses, and in caged layer rooms with birds infected with Salmonella enteritidis. It’s shown up to a 20-fold improvement over standard settling-plate sampling techniques and has performed better than a well-known and widely used medium-volume, laboratory-grade, portable impaction sampler costing about 100 times more than Mitchell’s device.