Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Confined and mechanically ventilated broiler house has been recently come into wide use to increase productivity and control rearing conditions. However, high dust concentration inside facility can threaten respiratory welfare of farmers and broilers. In Korea, there is no regulation in terms of air quality control inside agricultural facilities and sufficient data is not available. To cope with these, periodic monitoring of inhalable and respirable dust concentration were conducted according to season, broiler’s activity and specific events such as shipment work for broilers in mechanically ventilated broiler house. Chamber experiment was also designed to analyze mechanism of dust generation from ground beds according to water contents and surrounding wind environment. Results showed that significant increase of inhalable (p=0.002) and respirable (p=0.03) dust were observed when activity of broilers was high according to entrance of the workers. Even shipment work for matured broilers, high level of dust were observed; inhalable dust was exceeded the threshold limit over maximum 303 % and respirable dust was over maximum 1,550 %, implying that acute respiratory symptoms could be manifested for the workers. From the chamber experiment, critical water contents for interrupting of dust generation were measured; about 45 % for inhalable dust and about 50 % for respirable dust. These results can be a trigger for designing plan of dust control however it still needs consideration of various environmental conditions, hygiene problems, etc.