AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Gravimetric Analysis of Dust Loading and Human Exposure Assessment
YAN MA, Lisa Bramwell, Andrea R. Ferro, Clarkson University
Abstract Number: 185 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract People can be exposed to settled dust on floorings through dietary and non-dietary ingestion as well as inhalation of resuspended dust, primarily via human activities. Typical activities, such as cleaning or simply walking around, have been implicated with approximately 30% of total human exposure to PM$_(10) (Yakovleva et. al, 1999). In order to predict exposures to resuspended particles, size resolved settled dust floor loadings are critical. Literature values for floor loading vary widely and few size resolved data are available for particles in the inhalable range. We developed a new method to measure size-resolved floor loading, which combines the use of the ASTM Standard D5438 – 05 (Standard Practice for Collection of floor dust for chemical analysis) with a MOUDI$^(TM)(MSP, Shoreline, MN) cascading impactor. Gravimetric samples were collected via the MOUDI$^(TM) for six size bins:18-10, 10-5.6, 5.6-3.2, 3.2-1.8, 1.8-1.0, and 1.0-0.56 micrometers. Using this method,we collected and analyzed dust samples from 30 homes in St. Lawrence County, NY. These data formed an essential part of input files used within NIST’s multizone ventilation and mass transport software CONTAM 3.0a. Manipulating CONTAM 3.0, equipped with a deposition with resuspension source/sink element, enabled the generation of distributions of exposures to resuspended particles on different flooring types.