Salmonellae in the air environment: A review

Abstract

Salmonella bacteria, zoonotic pathogen, are frequently transmitted through food and water, producing toxins responsible for typhoid and paratyphoid fever. Bio-aerosols are growing concern as pathogenic bacteria could be transmitted to the ambient air, causing potential health hazards. The airborne transmission of pathogenic microorganisms should be considered as a route of infections. Salmonella have been found in rare counts in the air but indicate their ability to survive in the atmosphere. Physical, biological and environmental stressors affect survival of airborne microorganisms. The infectivity of airborne salmonella bacteria is determined by their pathogenicity, infective dose and individual health conditions. The accurate assessment of the presence of Salmonella in aerosols is a problem due to synergistically influence of many uncontrollable environmental conditions and lack of standardized sampling and analysis protocol. Knowledge on airborne Salmonella and factors influence their viability is critical to understand their potential health risk associated and the related-control measures. This review focuses on the scarcely data published concerning the presence of salmonella bacteria in the air environment, survivability, sampling and analysis methods, and control strategy.