Assessment of increased sampling pump flow rates in a disposable, inhalable aerosol sampler

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Occup Environ Hyg
• Personal Author:
  Stewart, Justin ; Sleeth, Darrah K. ; Handy, Rod G. ; Pahler, Leon F. ; Anthony, T. Renee ; Volckens, John
• Description:
  A newly designed, low-cost, disposable inhalable aerosol sampler was developed to assess workers personal exposure to inhalable particles. This sampler was originally designed to operate at 10 L/min to increase sample mass and, therefore, improve analytical detection limits for filter-based methods. Computational fluid dynamics modeling revealed that sampler performance (relative to aerosol inhalability criteria) would not differ substantially at sampler flows of 2 and 10 L/min. With this in mind, the newly designed inhalable aerosol sampler was tested in a wind tunnel, simultaneously, at flows of 2 and 10 L/min flow. A mannequin was equipped with 6 sampler/pump assemblies (three pumps operated at 2 L/min and three pumps at 10 L/min) inside a wind tunnel, operated at 0.2 m/s, which has been shown to be a typical indoor workplace wind speed. In separate tests, four different particle sizes were injected to determine if the sampler's performance with the new 10 L/min flow rate significantly differed to that at 2 L/min. A comparison between inhalable mass concentrations using a Wilcoxon signed rank test found no significant difference in the concentration of particles sampled at 10 and 2 L/min for all particle sizes tested. Our results suggest that this new aerosol sampler is a versatile tool that can improve exposure assessment capabilities for the practicing industrial hygienist by improving the limit of detection and allowing for shorting sampling times.
• Subjects:
  • Aerosols
  • Air Movements
  • Air Pollutants, Occupational
  • Environmental Monitoring
  • Equipment Design
  • Filtration
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Manikins
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Particle Size
  More +
• Keywords:
  • Aerosols
  • exposure assessment
  • high-flow
  • inhalable sampler
  • wind tunnel
• Source:
  J Occup Environ Hyg. 14(3):207-213
• Pubmed ID:
  27676440
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5724042
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R01 OH010295/OH/NIOSH CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  14
• Issue:
  3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/50511/cdc_50511_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 617.36 KB]
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:914ffc9b0458140a5f5d0c0fbba455b5c4e286628a66f7afafcedcc20c8eea84