AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
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Deposition of Ultrafine Particles in Human Airway
WEI-CHUNG SU, Yi Chen, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Abstract Number: 781 Working Group: Health Related Aerosols
Abstract To date, occupational health-related ultrafine particle (UFP) lung deposition studies have been all carried out in laboratory settings using a human airway replica containing merely a few sections of the upper lung airways. The applications of these laboratory-based lung deposition studies are restricted because it is known that very few UFPs deposit in the upper airways. Moreover, the generated UFPs are not representative of the UFPs that are generated due to processes and activities in actual workplaces. As a result, the relevance of the data acquired from the present UFP lung deposition studies is very limited. To improve the representativeness of lung deposition data as well as to overall advance the experimental approach of UFP lung deposition studies, this study used an improved approach to carry out UFP lung deposition experiments for the purpose to enable on-site workplace UFP lung deposition measurement. The experiment was designed by using a human airway replica and its modifications, and two SMPS units to directly estimate the UFP airway deposition fractions for each lung generation in the tracheobronchial airways. The initial deposition results obtained from using UFP surrogates showed that UFP lung deposition data can be efficiently and systematically acquired, which demonstrated the feasibility and the suitability of the experimental approach developed. The success of this study also ensures that UFP lung deposition data can be collected on-site in workplaces in the near future. The long-term goal of this research is to apply this experimental approach in various workplaces and ambient (non-work) environments having serious UFP exposure concerns to enhance the assessment of the UFP inhalation dosimetry.