Dylan Edwards (asker) Dec 24, 2012:

инфекция is also used once or twice in the first paragraph. Things begin to seem a bit vague if I use the same word for обсемененность and инфекция.

RitaZ Dec 19, 2012:

Dylan, I would translate it as you said -- "level of contamination" for the first one and just "contamination" for the second. The difference between contamination and infection is that the latter indicates that the bacteria have successfully colonized. Looking at your sentences, I think contamination (presence of bacteria) is more accurate.

Oleg Kadkin Dec 19, 2012:

I think infection, contamination, dissemination, and bacterization are synonimous, excluding that the last two carry a meaning of some sort of intented action. In addition to the rate/level/degree you can also use whichever from bacterial content, count, concentration, load, etc. Just IMHO.

Dylan Edwards (asker) Dec 19, 2012:

'Infection' or 'contamination' seems to work best, most of the time.

Example: 'повышается обсемененность патогенным стафилококком воздуха, родильниц, персонала и всех объектов внешней среды ...'

Looking through the article again, I see that the word обсеменение comes up a couple of times in the first paragraph. After that, I think it's обсемененность all the time.

Example from the 1st para.: Уже в первые часы жизни происходит обсеменение ребенка стафилококковой флорой ...

So, if you're using 'contamination', and if you want to make a distinction, I suppose it would be 'contamination' for обсеменение, and обсемененность would be something like the rate/level/degree of contamination.

RitaZ Dec 18, 2012:

In this case it definitely means contamination (or infection).

Dylan Edwards (asker) Dec 18, 2012:

Sorry, the word should be обсемененность.