An experimental study quantifying pulmonary ventilation on inhalation of aerosol under steady and episodic emission

Estimating inhalation dose accurately under realistic conditions can enhance the accuracy of risk assessment. Conventional methods to quantify aerosol concentration that susceptible victims in contaminated environments are exposed to use real time particle counters to measure concentrations in environments without occupancy. Breathing-induced airflow interacts and influences concentration around nostrils or mouth and alter the ultimate exposure. This subject has not yet been systematically studied, particularly under transient emission. In this work, an experimental facility comprising two manikins was designed and fabricated. One of them mimicked realistic breathing, acting as a susceptible victim. Both steady and episodic emissions were generated in an air-conditioned environmental chamber in which two different ventilation schemes were tested. The scaled-dose of the victim under different expiratory velocities and pulmonary ventilation was measured. Inferring from results obtained from comprehensive tests, it can be concluded that breathing has very significant influence on the ultimate dose compared with that without breathing. Majority of results show that breathing reduces inhalation quantity and the reduction magnitude increases with breathing rate. This is attributed to the fact that the exhalation process plays a more significant role in reducing the dose level than the enhanced effect during inhalation period. The higher the breathing rate, the sharper the decline of the resultant concentration would be leading to lower dose. Nevertheless, under low pulmonary ventilation, results show that breathing increases dose marginally. Results also reveals that ventilation scheme also affects the exposure. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.