A person’s aerosol particle emission increased 132-fold on average when he or she worked out at the highest intensity, a small study found.

June 13, 2022, 8:25 AM EDT / Source: TODAY

By A. Pawlowski

That gym member panting next to you in spin class may be exhaling a huge amount of aerosol particles — the kind that can transmit viruses, including the one that causes COVID-19 — leading to a “super emission” during intense exercise, a new study has found.

A person’s aerosol particle emission increased 132-fold on average when he or she worked out at the highest intensity — skyrocketing from about 580 particles per minute at rest to about 76,000 during maximum exertion.

That startling rise might partly explain “superspreader events” during high-intensity group exercise indoors, the authors wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2020, researchers in South Korea found 112 COVID-19 cases linked to fitness dance classes at 12 different gyms. That same year, Hawaii reported a “COVID-19 cluster” where 21 cases at three fitness facilities were linked to an instructor who taught a spin class and other group classes days before experiencing symptoms.

“Vigorous exercise puts out a lot of particles in the air and very small droplets that waft in the air, making it more likely that they’re going to linger around and you could pick it up,” Dr. Marissa Levine, director of the Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice at the University of South Florida in Tampa, told TODAY. She was not involved in the new study.

“It’s particularly worrisome as we see these waves of disease… if you have a variant that’s easy to transmit and you have a lot of them in a small space because people are exercising vigorously, that means your risk is going to be higher if you go into that setting.”