Abstract View
A Simulated Respiratory System for Secondhand Smoke Generation and Aerosol Toxicological Studies
WEIXING HAO, Kapiamba Kashala Fabrice, Huang Yue-Wern, Yang Wang, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract Number: 109
Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract
Secondhand smoke endangers both the environment and the health of non-smokers. Exposure to secondhand smoke from tobacco products can cause both acute and chronic health impacts. However, secondhand smoke generated from Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) has not been thoroughly studied. Due to the scarcity of repeatable data generated by volunteers, a simulated respiratory system that generates representative secondhand smoke will be significant for studying the physical, chemical, and toxicological properties of the smoke. In order to generate representative secondhand smoke aerosols, the simulated respiratory system needs to mimic the particle deposition of smoke particles. To capture the size-dependent deposition efficiency, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) developed the human respiratory tract model for radiological protection that describes the deposition efficiencies in extrathoracic, bronchi, and alveoli regions of the respiratory system.
Enlightened by our recent study on characterizing size-dependent filtration efficiency of common household fabric materials, we identified three filter media that generate nearly identical filtration efficiencies compared to three regions of the human respiratory system over a wide submicron size range. It is therefore feasible to combine these filter materials to construct a simulated human respiratory system in aerosol deposition and the generation of representative secondhand smoke. In this study, we demonstrated the performance of the proposed respiratory system under various sampling flow rates and relative humidities. The difference of aerosol deposition efficiencies between the simulated respiratory system and the ICRP model was below 10% in the size range of 30 to 500 nm. Additionally, we compared the properties of tobacco cigarettes and ENDS secondhand smoke particles to those of primary smoke particles. Such a system can facilitate the laboratory studies of secondhand smoke due to its simple structure, high repeatability, ease of control, and free of human subjects.