A study of air quality and respiratory infections in pigs raised in confinement

Impact of particulate matter and ammonia on average daily weight gain, mortality and lung lesions in pigs

“…Many studies focus on the impact of NH 3 or PM on atrophic rhinitis (AR), are dated and were performed in confined research facilities (Stombaugh et al, 1969;Curtis et al, 1975;Drummond et al, 1980;Underdahl et al, 1982;Urbain et al, 1996;Hamilton et al, 1998Hamilton et al, , 1999Wathes et al, 2004;Done et al, 2005). No consensus is obtained on whether (Stombaugh et al, 1969;Curtis et al, 1975;Chiba et al, 1985;Donham, 1991;Jolie et al, 1999b) or not (Drummond et al, 1980;Carpenter and Moulsley, 1986;Van 't Klooster et al, 1993;Jansen and Feddes, 1995;Takai et al, 1995;Urbain et al, 1996;Hamilton et al, 1999;Done et al, 2005) PM or NH 3 affect health or production under current field conditions.…”

“…No consensus is obtained on whether (Stombaugh et al, 1969;Curtis et al, 1975;Chiba et al, 1985;Donham, 1991;Jolie et al, 1999b) or not (Drummond et al, 1980;Carpenter and Moulsley, 1986;Van 't Klooster et al, 1993;Jansen and Feddes, 1995;Takai et al, 1995;Urbain et al, 1996;Hamilton et al, 1999;Done et al, 2005) PM or NH 3 affect health or production under current field conditions. Further, many studies consider only the impact of PM (Chiba et al, 1985;Van 't Klooster et al, 1993;Jolie et al, 1999a) or NH 3 (Stombaugh et al, 1969;Underdahl et al, 1982;Urbain et al, 1996;Hamilton et al, 1998) on respiratory parameters (Urbain et al, 1996;Hamilton et al, 1998Hamilton et al, , 1999Done et al, 2005) or production data (Bate et al, 1987;Wathes et al, 2004), but not the associations and long term environmental exposures in relation with health and production. Only one study exposed pigs to aerial PM (40.6 mg/m 3 ) in combination with lipopolysaccharide for 15 weeks (5 days per week, 8 h per day) but no influence on macroscopic lung lesions was noticed (Jolie et al, 1999a).…”

Low temperature and dust favourin vitrosurvival ofMycoplasma hyopneumoniae: time to revisit indirect transmission in pig housing

“…Dust can affect health by causing irritation to the respiratory tract (Donham and Leininger 1984) and provide a vector for pathogenic organisms to create disease (Curtis et al 1975). Indeed, dust has frequently been associated with increased risk of respiratory disease in pigs (Underdahl et al 1982;Donham 1991), but whether this occurs through impairment of the respiratory epithelium or by allowing pathogens to survive longer, or a combination of both, is not known. Increased levels of dust in the environment of pigs are associated with poor hygiene and management practices, for example, where stocking density is high or ventilation is poor this has been shown to exacerbate respiratory disease (St€ ark 1999(St€ ark , 2000.…”

Effect of air velocity and temperature on reducing dust levels in pig nurseries

“…Van Wicklen and Albright (1982a) found that calf mortality in outdoor hutches is usually much lower than in enclosed barns due to dilution of viable respirable aerosols. From their experiments on hogs, Underdahl et al (1982) reported that on all the farms sneezing was noted among some,of the older pigs in the farrowing unit. Sneezing was always recorded in the nursery and appeared to be caused by dust in the feeders and the environment.…”