PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Whyte, W. AU - Niven, L. TI - Airborne Bacteria Sampling: The Effect of Dehydration and Sampling Time DP - 1986 Sep 01 TA - PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology PG - 182--188 VI - 40 IP - 5 4099 - http://journal.pda.org/content/40/5/182.short 4100 - http://journal.pda.org/content/40/5/182.full SO - PDA J Pharm Sci Technol1986 Sep 01; 40 AB - Lengthy airborne sampling is thought to cause desiccation of bacterial media and loss of viability of collected bacteria. Experiments reported in this paper show that micro-organisms commonly found in room air, are little affected (approximately 8% reduction in viability) by a 13% reduction in the water content of the agar inpetri dishes. Acceptance of this reduction in viability would allow bacterial plates to be exposed for about 24 hr in still room air, over 6 hr in a laminar-flow work bench, and over 1 hr in a 30 liters/min (7 ft3/min) bacterial slit sampler. It is demonstrated that to obtain accurate air sampling results in clean areas, air sampling times must be extended considerably from what is now, common practice.