Monitoring of pathogen carrying air-borne tea dust particles by light scattering

In order to investigate whether tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze) dust particles could be a possible carrier of the pathogen contaminated Mycobacterium a biotechnical procedure was used, and to verify the possibility of monitoring this dust, a laser based light scattering setup was designed and fabricated. Experiments were carried out using the strain Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2 155 as a model organism to study the effect on tea dust particles. Light scattering investigations on both M. smegmatis contaminated and uncontaminated tea dust particle samples were carried out as a function of scattering angle at 543.5, 594.5 and 632.5 nm wavelengths. The results have shown that the behavior of tea dust samples both with and without Mycobacterium varies significantly for all the three different incident laser wavelengths.

Research Highlights► We designed and fabricated a portable and low cost light-scattering instrument. ► Light scattering studies on Mycobacterium contaminated and uncontaminated tea dust. ► Scattering studied as a function of scattering angle at 543.5, 594.5 and 632.5 nm wavelengths. ► Experiments carried out with Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2 155 as a model organism. ► Investigations revealed that tea dust might act as potent carrier of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.