Aerosol Exposure Program

Key Facilities and Equipment

Tom Peters and Randy Newsome study particle re-suspension caused by walking on soiled carpeting.

Facilities

• Environmental Test Facility - A low flow wind tunnel facility with a 4 foot by 6 foot cross-section that was designed to characterize the aerosol emissions from selected activities (e.g. walking on soiled carpeting) or apparatus (e.g. vacuum cleaners, clean room products).

• Class 100 Constant Temperature/Humidity Chamber - A constant temperature and humidity chamber inside a Class 100 clean room that allows filter weighing and other sample preparations under exceptionally controlled conditions.

• Uniform Liquid Spray Deposition Chamber - A custom-designed chamber to coat contact surfaces for dermal research with uniformly applied liquid droplets.

• Uniform Test Dust Deposition Chamber - A custom-designed chamber to coat contact surfaces for dermal research with uniformly applied housedusts and artificial test dusts.

Equipment

• Mettler AT20 Microbalances (2) - Computer controlled and equipped with a light pen for bar-coded filter labels.

• Personal Exposure Monitoring Systems (over 100 units) - Custom-designed pump/flow controller systems to collect integrated particle samples on Teflon filter media for a large study population (e.g. probability-based sampling). The monitors can be operated in a personal mode (waist pack or shoulder strap mounted inlet), indoor mode (floor stand mounted), or outdoor mode (tripod on ground stake mounted). PM2.5 and PM10 particle size fractions can be sampled.

• Turner Model 450 Fluorometer - A highly sensitivity unit, optimized for fluorescently-tagged particle tracer studies.

• Particle Measurement Systems LAS-X - A laser-based optical particle counter capable of sizing particles in 16 channels from ~0.09 to 5 micrometers. Size distribution data are automatically stored in a dedicated computer system, using averaging times as short as 8 seconds.

• TSI Aerodynamic Particle Sizer - A "time-of-flight" aerosol spectrometer capable of aerodynamically sizing particles in up to 60 channels from ~0.7 to 15 micrometers (practical limits). Size distribution data are automatically stored in a dedicated computer system, using averaging times as short as 1 second.

• Dantec Hot-Wire Anemometer System - A computer-controlled, point-velocity system, optimized for low velocity measurements (as low as 2 cm/s), with a variety of probe configurations for specific applications.

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