Stretching and break-up of saliva filaments during speech: A route for pathogen aerosolization and its potential mitigation

Abstract

High-speed visualization identifies the formation mechanism of microscopic saliva droplets during the phonation of plosive consonants: as moist lips open, there is a sequence of film formation and rupture into vertically attached filaments, which subsequently extend over centimeter-scales and destabilize into droplets due to the fast airflow of speech. The formation process ties this aerosolization mechanism to drop formation in wind instruments and to meter-long, speech-driven transport important to asymptomatic transmission of airborne pathogens.

Topics & Concepts