Luca Stabile

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Cassino and Southern Lazio

Student sleepiness during classes is a frequently reported condition that can impair performance in the teaching–learning process and is even unsustainable for health. Although the environmental quality of the classroom may affect the students’ sleepiness, studies that exhaustively investigate the relationship between indoor environmental quality (...

Objective To evaluate the impact of physical activity on the mood states of active and insufficiently active Italian adolescents and the relationships with sleep quality, sex, and academic performance, analyzing guidelines for the post-COVID-19 scenario. Methods This is a cross-sectional, quantitative, and descriptive study. Data collection was ca...

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgency of understanding virus transmission dynamics, particularly in indoor environments characterized by high occupancy and suboptimal ventilation systems. Airborne transmission, recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO), poses a significant risk, influenced by various factors, including contact d...

This study offers a detailed techno-economic assessment of Carbon Capture (CC) integration in an existing Waste-to-Energy (WtE) incineration plant, focusing on retrofit application. Post-combustion carbon capture using monoethanolamine (MEA) was modeled for various low-scale plant sizes (3000, 6000, and 12,000 t of CO2 per year), using a process si...

Objective: In the context of filovirus outbreaks, chlorine spraying has been the standard for infection prevention and control. Due to potential occupational health risks, public health institutions now recommend wiping, which is labor-intensive and may increase the risk of heat stress for healthcare workers wearing personal protective equipment. T...

Indoor air quality is negatively affected by the emission of different combustion sources releasing airborne particles and related particle-bound toxic compounds (e.g., heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). To date, very few studies focused on the chemical characterization of the airborne particles emitted by indoor sources were carri...

The effect of cooking aerosol on the human heart was investigated in this study. The heart rate and blood pressure of 33 healthy adults were monitored before, exactly after, and two hours post-exposure (30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minutes after cooking). One hundred twenty grams of ground beef was fried in sunflower oil for twenty m...

This paper provides an overview of the integration of Carbon Capture, Utilization, or Storage (CCUS) technologies with Waste-to-Energy (WtE) incineration plants in retrofit applications. It explains the operational principles of WtE incineration, including the generation of both biogenic and fossil CO2 emissions and the potential for CCUS technolog...

Emissions of ultrafine particles (UFPs; diameter < 100 nm) are strongly associated with traffic-related emissions and are a growing global concern in urban environments. The aim of this study was to investigate the variations of particle number concentration (PNC) with a diameter > 10 nm at nine stations and understand the major sources of UFPs (pr...

The number of respiratory particles emitted during different respiratory activities is one of the main parameters affecting the airborne transmission of respiratory pathogens. Information on respiratory particle emission rates is mostly available for adults (few studies have investigated adolescents and children) and generally involves a limited nu...

Characterizing the size distribution of airborne particles carrying SARS-CoV-2 virus is essential for understanding and predicting airborne transmission and spreading of COVID-19 disease in hospitals as well as public and home indoor settings. Nonetheless, few data are currently available on virus-laden particle size distribution. Thus, the aim of...

Pathogens such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2), influenza, and rhinoviruses are transmitted by airborne aerosol respiratory particles that are exhaled by infectious subjects. We have previously reported that the emission of aerosol particles increases on average 132-fold from rest to maximal endurance exercise....

Atmospheric pollutants present environmental threats to health and have been investigated in different environments, such as highways, squares, parks, and gyms. These environments are frequented by older adults, who are considered fragile to the harmful impacts of pollution present in the air. The aim was to analyze the state of the art on the effe...

Introduction While increasing the ventilation rate is an important measure to remove inhalable virus-laden respiratory particles and lower the risk of infection, direct validation in schools with population-based studies is far from definitive. Methods We investigated the strength of association between ventilation and SARS-CoV-2 transmission repo...

Indoor air quality, a major concern for human health, is strongly influenced by occupants' behavior but people are not aware about how their everyday behavior affects their exposure to pollutants. In the present paper we tried to cope with the gap of knowledge between lack of awareness and the understanding of how occupants’ behaviors affect the en...

Given that breathing is one of the most fundamental physiological functions, there is an urgent need to broaden our understanding of the fluid dynamics that governs it. There would be many benefits from doing so, including a better assessment of respiratory health, a basis for more precise delivery of pharmaceutical drugs for treatment, and the und...

Background: While increasing the ventilation rate is an important measure to remove inhalable virus-laden respiratory particles and lower the risk of infection, direct validation in schools with population-based studies is far from definitive. Methods: We investigated the strength of association between ventilation and SARS-CoV-2 transmission repor...

In indoor environments such as private cars, taxis and public transport, social distance cannot always be applied and virus concentrations can reach high levels. In this paper, a Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is adopted for the transient simulation of aerosol airborne dispersion in a passenger car cabin. The numerical tool, validated by PIV analysis...

Public transport environments are thought to play a key role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Indeed, high crowding indexes (i.e. high numbers of people relative to the vehicle size), inadequate clean air supply, and frequent extended exposure durations make transport environments potential hotspots for transmission of respiratory infections....

Pollutant emissions from residential heating systems represent a main concern in terms of outdoor air quality. Differently from other pollutants, sub-micron particle emission from heating systems has not yet been exhaustively characterized by the scientific literature, with limited data available, in particular, for gas-fueled boilers. In the prese...

In this study, the risk of infection from SARS‐CoV‐2 Delta variant of passengers sharing a car cabin with an infected subject for a 30‐min journey is estimated through an integrated approach combining a recently developed predictive emission‐to‐risk approach and a validated CFD numerical model numerically solved using the open‐source OpenFOAM softw...

In this paper the risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant of passengers sharing a car cabin with an infected subject for a 30-min journey is estimated through an integrated approach combining a recently developed predictive emission-to-risk approach and a validated CFD numerical model numerically solved using the open-source OpenFOAM softwa...

The airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 remains surprisingly controversial; indeed, health and regulatory authorities still require direct proof of this mode of transmission. To close this gap, we measured the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 of an infected subject in a hospital room (through an oral and nasopharyngeal swab), as well as the airborne SARS-C...

Background Effective vaccines are now available for SARS-CoV-2 in the 2nd year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there remains significant uncertainty surrounding the necessary vaccination rate to safely lift occupancy controls in public buildings and return to pre-pandemic norms. The aim of this paper is to estimate setting-specific vaccination thresh...

The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 causes higher viral loads in infected hosts, increasing the risk of close proximity airborne transmission through breathing, speaking and coughing. We performed a Monte Carlo simulation using a social contact network and exponential dose-response model to quantify the close proximity reproduction number of both wild-...

This study is the first study that reports the cluster particle (1–3 nm) formation (CPF) in two modern preschools located in Nur-Sultan city of Kazakhstan from October 28 to November 27, 2019. The average particle number concentration and mode diameter values during major CPF events in Preschool I and Preschool II were found to be 1.90 × 10⁶ (SD 6....

In this study, we apply a novel combination of close proximity and room-scale risk assessment approaches for people sharing public transport environments to predict their contagion risk due to SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection. In particular, the individual infection risk of susceptible subjects and the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 (expressed thro...

The question of how SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted remains surprisingly controversial today, especially with reference to airborne transmission. In fact, despite a large body of scientific evidence, health and regulatory authorities still require direct proof of this mode of transmission. To close this gap, we measured the saliva viral load of SARS-CoV-...

The infectious emission rate is a fundamental input parameter for airborne transmission risk assessment, but data are limited due to reliance on estimates from chance superspreading events. This study assesses the strength of a predictive estimation approach developed by the authors for SARS-CoV-2 and uses novel estimates to compare the contagiousn...

Minimizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission is essential to face the COVID-19 pandemic. This is even more important for highly crowded indoor environments, e.g. schools, where the mitigation solutions based on social distancing and hand washing seem to be not effective to reduce the virus airborne transmission mode, which is the main route of tran...

Background Effective vaccines are now available for SARS-CoV-2 in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there remains significant uncertainty surrounding the necessary vaccination rate to safely lift occupancy controls in public buildings and return to pre-pandemic norms. The aim of this paper is to estimate setting-specific vaccination thr...

Indoor particle sources are recognized as detrimental for indoor air quality. Indeed, the high emission rates of the different aerosol metrics and carcinogenic compounds can lead to a high lung cancer risk for people exposed in indoor environments. A-priori lung cancer risk assessments could be very helpful to identify critical environments and sou...

Background There has been a notable increase in knowledge production on air pollution and human health. Objective To analyze the state of the art on the effects of air pollution on human health through a mapping review of existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SRs and MAs). Methods The systematic mapping review was based on the recommenda...

Reducing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through indoor air is the key challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Crowded indoor environments, such as schools, represent possible hotspots for virus transmission since the basic non-pharmaceutical mitigation measures applied so far (e.g. social distancing) do not eliminate the airborne transmission mode. The...

Although the interpersonal distance represents an important parameter affecting the risk of infection due to respiratory viruses, the mechanism of exposure to exhaled droplets remains insufficiently characterized. In this study, an integrated risk assessment is presented for SARS-CoV-2 close proximity exposure between a speaking infectious subject...

Although close contact represents an important contagion route, the mechanism of exposure to exhaled droplets remains insufficiently characterized. In this study, an integrated risk assessment is presented for SARS-CoV-2 close contact exposure between a speaking infectious subject and a susceptible subject. It is based on a three-dimensional transi...

Ventilation in built environments is essential to guarantee a good indoor air quality and a reduced probability of infection related to virus transmission. Measuring ventilation-related parameters is not easy and currently two methods can be adopted: pressurization and tracer gas decay. The pressurization test measures the airtightness of the build...

Reducing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through indoor air is the key challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Crowded indoor environments, such as schools, represent possible hotspots for virus transmission since the basic non-pharmaceutical mitigation measures applied so far (e.g. social distancing) do not eliminate the airborne transmission mode. The...

Quantitative chemical analysis of airborne particulate matter (PM) is vital for the understanding of health effects in indoor and outdoor environments, as well as for enforcing EU air quality regulations. Typically, airborne particles are sampled over long time periods on filters, followed by lab-based analysis, e.g., with inductively coupled plasm...

Given the widespread concern but general lack of information over the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection in public transport, key issues such as passenger personal hygiene, efficient air circulation systems, and the effective disinfection of frequently touched surfaces need to be evaluated to educate the public and diminish the risk of viral trans...

Background The infectious emission rate is a critical input parameter for airborne contagion models, but data are limited due to reliance on estimates from chance superspreading events. A predictive estimation approach for the quanta emission rate (ER q ) was recently proposed for SARS-CoV-2 using the droplet volume concentration of various expirat...

The global spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has challenged most countries worldwide. It was quickly recognized that reduced activities (lockdowns) during the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic produced major changes in air quality. Our objective was to assess the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on gr...

In this work, we characterise the performance of a Sharp optical aerosol sensor model GP2Y1010AU0F. The sensor was exposed to different environments: to a clean room, to a controlled atmosphere with known aerosol size distribution and to the ambient atmosphere on a busy city street. During the exposure, the output waveforms of the sensor pulses wer...

Airborne transmission is a recognized pathway of contagion; however, it is rarely quantitatively evaluated. The numerous outbreaks that have occurred during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic are putting a demand on researchers to develop approaches capable of both predicting contagion in closed environments (predictive assessment) and analyzing previous infe...

The new particle formation due to the use of cleaning products containing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in indoor environments is well documented in the scientific literature. Indeed, the physical‐chemical process occurring in particle nucleation due to VOC‐ozone reactions was deepened as well as the effect of the main influencing parameters (i...

In everyday life, people are exposed to different concentrations of airborne particles depending on the microenvironment where they perform their different activities. Such exposure can lead to high sub-micron particle doses. The received dose depends on particle concentration to which people are exposed (typically expressed in terms of number or s...

Airborne transmission is a recognized pathway of contagion; however, it is rarely quantitatively evaluated. This study presents a novel approach for quantitative assessment of the individual infection risk of susceptible subjects exposed in indoor microenvironments in the presence of an asymptomatic infected SARS-CoV-2 subject. The approach allowed...

In the present study, the daily dose in terms of submicron particle surface area received by children attending schools located in three different areas (rural, suburban, and urban), characterized by different outdoor concentrations, was evaluated. For this purpose, the exposure to submicron particle concentration levels of the children were measur...

Airborne transmission is a pathway of contagion that is still not sufficiently investigated despite the evidence in the scientific literature of the role it can play in the context of an epidemic. While the medical research area dedicates efforts to find cures and remedies to counteract the effects of a virus, the engineering area is involved in pr...

Airborne transmission is a pathway of contagion that is still not sufficiently investigated despite the evidence in the scientific literature of the role it can play in the context of an epidemic. While the medical research area dedicates efforts to find cures and remedies to counteract the effects of a virus, the engineering area is involved in pr...

European countries have made progress in reducing particulate air pollution in recent decades being concerned about their heath and climate effect. In addition to determining particulate number size distributions, it is crucial to have a methodology to determine size distribution of elemental concentrations down to the ultrafine size fraction. The...

One of the most important functions of air conditioning systems in operating rooms is to protect occupants against pathogenic agents transported by air. This protection is done by simultaneously controlling the air distribution, temperature, humidity, filtration and infiltration from other areas etc. Due to their low price, simple installation, ope...

The “BlowerDoorTest_Tool_ver1.0” was developed under the project “PRIN Riqualificazione del parco edilizio esistente in ottica NZEB/Renovation of existing buildings in NZEB vision (nearly Zero Energy Buildings)” funded by MIUR (grant number 2015S7E247_002). It is a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (no macros were adopted to make it easy-to-use) w...

The paper is focused on the comparison between two measurement methods typically adopted to characterize the building ventilation: the measurement of the air permeability (pressurization test) and the measurement of the actual air exchange rate (tracer gas decay test). In particular, the criticalities related to the correlation of air permeability...

Indoor school gyms are environments characterized by high concentrations of different airborne particulate and gaseous pollutants. In particular, like other naturally-ventilated school environments, in addition to indoor pollutants children can be exposed to sub-micron particles and gaseous pollutants emitted by outdoor sources and penetrating the...

The paper is focused on the emission of sub-micron particles from incinerator plants characterized by different treatment sections. In particular, measurement of particle number concentrations and distributions in different sampling points of the flue-gas treatment sections, and/or over several years, allowed to detect, for the very first time thro...

Most of the school buildings in Italy are high energy-demanding buildings with no ad-hoc ventilation systems (i.e., naturally-ventilated buildings). Therefore, reducing the heat losses of schools represent the main aspect to be dealt with. Nonetheless, the indoor air quality of the building should be simultaneously considered. Indeed, to date, ener...

Our work a decade ago demonstrated that approximately 30% of the laser printers tested were high emitters of ultrafine particles (<0.1 μm). To assess how emission levels of the current generation of printers compared to the earlier models, we investigated 297 printers comprising 138 models from 12 different manufacturers, with the measurements cond...

The energy retrofit of existing buildings is a key strategy to reduce the energy costs of the building sector. Amongst the retrofit solutions, the adoption of mechanical ventilation systems represents a necessary approach for buildings with high crowding index, such as schools. The air quality in schools is a main issue since children spend a signi...

The surgical smoke is commonly generated by electrosurgery, i.e. by the heat-producing device used in operating rooms for cutting tissues and coagulating small blood vessels through the use of high-frequency electrical current. Health effects due to the exposure to surgical smoke were recently recognized, thus the scientific community is currently...

Several studies have shown an increased mortality rate for different types of tumors, respiratory disease and cardiovascular morbidity associated with foundry work. Airborne particles were investigated in a steelmaking foundry using an electric low-pressure impactor (ELPI+™), a Philips Aerasense Nanotracer and traditional sampling equipment. Determ...

Air quality still represents a main threat to human health in cities. Even in developed countries, decades of air pollution control not yet allowed to reduce pollutant concentrations in urban areas adequately. Indeed, high airborne particle concentrations are measured in several European cities; this is a main issue since particles represent a carr...

The correlation amongst exposure to ultrafine particle concentrations and heart rate in a large healthy population was investigated. The study was conducted by continuously monitoring for seven days fifty volunteers in terms of exposure to particle concentrations, heart rate and physical activity performed through portable monitors. Data were analy...

Combustion-generated nanoparticles are responsible for negative health effects due to their ability to penetrate in the lungs, carrying toxic compounds with them. In urban areas, the coexistence of nanoparticle sources and particular street-building configurations can lead to very high particle exposure levels. In the present paper, an innovative a...

Biomass combustion significantly contributes to indoor and outdoor air pollution and to the adverse health effects observed in the exposed populations. Besides, the contribution to toxicity of the particles derived from combustion of different biomass sources (pellet, wood, charcoal), as well as their biological mode of action, are still poorly und...

Smoking activities still represent the main, and preventable, cause of lung cancer risk worldwide. For this reason, a number of studies were carried out to deepen and better characterize the emission of cigarette-generated mainstream aerosols in order to perform an a-priori evaluation of the particle doses and related lung cancer risks received by...

Smoking activities were recognized as a main risk factor for population. Indeed, mainstream smoke aerosol is directly inhaled by smokers then delivering harmful compounds in the deepest regions of the lung. In order to reduce the potential risk of smoking, different nicotine delivery products have been recently developed. The latest device released...

Homes represent a critical microenvironment in terms of air quality due to the proximity to main particle sources and the lack of proper ventilation systems. Biomass-fed heating systems are still extensively used worldwide, then likely emitting a significant amount of particles in indoor environments. Nonetheless, research on biomass emissions are...

In order to reduce children's exposure to pollutants in classrooms a proper ventilation strategy need to be adopted. Such strategy is even more important in naturally ventilated schools where the air exchange rate is only based on the manual airing of classrooms. The present work aimed to evaluate the effect of the manual airing strategy on indoor...

Electronic cigarettes (ECs) are perceived to be safer than traditional tobacco cigarettes because of the absence of combustion processes. The use of these devices, however, exposes the users (“vapers”) and passive “vapers” to possible high concentration of fine and ultrafine particles (UFPs) which can deliver toxic and carcinogenic compounds. In th...

Schools represent a critical microenvironment in terms of air quality due to the proximity to outdoor particle sources and the frequent lack of proper ventilation and filtering systems. Moreover, the population exposed in schools (i.e. children) represents a susceptible population due to their age. Air quality-based studies involving students' expo...

In the present study, the daily dose in terms of particle surface area received by citizens living in five cities in Western countries, characterized by different lifestyle, culture, climate and built-up environment, was evaluated and compared. For this purpose, the exposure to sub-micron particle concentration levels of the population living in Ba...

Recently, interest for the potential impact of consumer-relevant engineered nanoparticles on pregnancy has dramatically increased. This study investigates whether inhaled silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) reach and cross mouse placental barrier and induce adverse effects. Apart from their relevance for the growing use in consumer products and biomedical...

Particle size-number distributions of aerosol from e-cigarettes (0 and 14 mg mL(-1) nicotine) were compared with conventional cigarettes. Results were used to provide age-specific (9-21 years) dosimetry estimates applying the MMPD model. After a 2-s puff, total number doses (D Tot ) were highest for 9 years of age (6.01 × 10(10)-1.31 × 10(11) parti...

In order to estimate the lung cancer risk associated to airborne particles, exposure and risk-assessment studies ordinarily use particle mass concentration as dosimetry parameter. Consequently, the corresponding air quality targets are based on this metrics, neglecting the potential impact of ultrafirie particles (UFPs) due to their negligible mass...

Emission of particles from laser printers in office environments is claimed to have impact on human health due to likelihood of exposure to high particle concentrations in such indoor environments. In the present paper, particle emission characteristics of 110 laser printers from different manufacturers were analyzed, and estimations of their emiss...

Cigarette smoking represents the main cause of lung cancer events. This is due to the carcinogenic compounds condensed onto particles generated during the combustion process and then inhaled through the mainstream side (i.e. the cigarette filter side) of the cigarette. The present paper applied a novel lung cancer risk model, able to take into acco...

Cigarette smoke is the main cause of lung cancer events. Mainstream cigarette smoke (MSS) is a direct concern for smokers, but also the secondhand smoke (SHS) contributes to the smoker exposure. In addition, smoker exposure is affected by the “free-smoke” particle exposure (B), related to the micro-environments where smokers spend time. The aim of...

In order to estimate the lung cancer risk associated to airborne particles, exposure and risk-assessment studies ordinarily use particle mass concentration as dosimetry parameter. Consequently, the corresponding air quality targets are based on this metrics, neglecting the potential impact of ultrafine particles (UFPs) due to their negligible mass....

In the present study a mobile monitoring approach (i.e. bike with onboard instruments) was proposed and applied to investigate the spatial variability of all the key airborne particle metrics in an Italian urban area from a statistical point of view. Particle number, alveolar-deposited surface area, and PM10 concentrations were measured through han...

In order to investigate the interaction between radon progeny and particles, an experimental campaign was carried out in a radon chamber at the Italian National Institute of Ionizing Radiation Metrology, quantifying the amount of attached and unattached radon daughters present in air, as well as the equilibrium factor in the presence of particles g...

The effect of the exposure to airborne particles on the physical performances achieved by athletes was investigated. Respiratory and cardiovascular parameters of nine subjects (volunteers, regularly performing physical activity) were measured during their high-intensity exercise performed indoor on a cycle ergometer. A steady-state concentration of...

The toxicity of particulate matter emitted from waste-to-energy plants, is associated to the compounds attached to the particles, several of which have been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in the Group 1 carcinogens. In this paper a modified risk-assessment model, deriving from an existing one, was applied to es...

The knowledge of exposure to the airborne particle emitted from 3D printing activities is becoming a crucial issue due to the relevant spreading of such devices in recent years. To this end, a low-cost desktop 3D printer based on fused deposition modeling principle was used. Particle number, alveolar-deposited surface area and mass concentrations w...

The study is focused on the evaluation of air permeability and ventilation rate in Italian classrooms. Measurements were performed in 16 naturally ventilated classrooms located in Cassino, Central Italy. Classrooms’ airtightness was evaluated through the fan pressurization method. Air exchange rates where both estimated from the blower door results...