In a November study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, a multidisciplinary team at the school examined respiratory aerosol emissions from a panel of healthy individuals of varying age and gender while talking and singing in a controlled laboratory setting.

Researchers concluded that singing produced 77% more aerosol than talking, adults produced 62% more aerosol than minors and males produced 34% more aerosol than females. ?

The study was originally developed early on during the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to determine what people in performing arts can do to safely return to the stage.

And, the louder one talks or sings, the worse the emissions," the university said in a news post on its website, detailing the study.

Limitations include that controlled study designs – including the laboratory environment – may "lack generalizability" to real-world situations, other types of vocal activities were not considered, the group did not quantify respiratory disease transmission risk and that additional observation and research is necessary to characterize respiratory aerosol emissions during early childhood development.

Goble said that working with the CSU engineers helped his team to better understand how visual and performing arts could reimplement their programming

These results, study authors noted, support further investigation of voice volume and CO2 as indicators of infection risk indoors