Not to be confused with Wells-Riley model, which considers how airborne infectious particles can cause new infections..
The Wells curve demonstrates that respiratory droplets rapidly dry out or fall to the ground after being exhaled.
The Wells curve (or Wells evaporation falling curve of droplets) is a diagram, developed by W. F. Wells in 1934, which describes what is expected to happen to small droplets once they have been exhaled into air.[1]
Coughing, sneezing, and other violent exhalations produce high numbers of respiratory droplets derived from saliva and/or respiratory mucus, with sizes ranging from about 1 μm to 2 mm.[2][3] Wells' insight was that such droplets would have two distinct fates, depending on their sizes. The interplay of gravity and evaporation means that droplets larger than a humidity-determined threshold size would fall to the ground due to gravity, while droplets smaller than this size would quickly evaporate, leaving a dry residue that drifts in the air. Since droplets from an infected person may contain infectious bacteria or viruses, these processes influence transmission of respiratory diseases.[4][5]
A traditional hard size cutoff of 5 μm between airborne and respiratory droplets has been criticized as a false dichotomy not grounded in science, as exhaled particles form a continuum of sizes whose fates depend on environmental conditions in addition to their initial sizes. However, it has informed hospital based transmission based precautions for decades.[6]
^Wells, W. F. (1934-11-01). "On Air-Borne Infection". American Journal of Epidemiology. 20 (3): 611–618. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a118097. ISSN 0002-9262.
^Duguid, J. P. (September 1946). "The size and the duration of air-carriage of respiratory droplets and droplet-nuclei". Epidemiology & Infection. 44 (6): 471–479. doi:10.1017/S0022172400019288. ISSN 1469-4409. PMC 2234804. PMID 20475760.
^Cite error: The named reference Gralton was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Kutter, Jasmin S; Spronken, Monique I; Fraaij, Pieter L; Fouchier, Ron AM; Herfst, Sander (2018-02-01). "Transmission routes of respiratory viruses among humans". Current Opinion in Virology. Emerging viruses: intraspecies transmission • Viral Immunology. 28: 142–151. doi:10.1016/j.coviro.2018.01.001. ISSN 1879-6257. PMC 7102683. PMID 29452994.
^World Health Organization; Y. Chartier; C. L Pessoa-Silva (2009). Natural Ventilation for Infection Control in Health-care Settings. World Health Organization. p. 79. ISBN 978-92-4-154785-7.
^Environmental Health Matters Initiative; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020-10-22). Shelton-Davenport, Marilee; Pavlin, Julie; Saunders, Jennifer; Staudt, Amanda (eds.). Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: Proceedings of a Workshopâ€"in Brief. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25958. ISBN 978-0-309-68408-8. PMID 33119244. S2CID 236828761.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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