Deposition of E‐cigarette aerosol in human airways through passive vaping

Abstract

Secondary exposure to e‐cigarette aerosol (passive vaping) will soon become a pressing public health issue in the world. Yet, the current knowledge about respiratory depositions of e‐cigarette aerosol through passive vaping in human airways is limited due to critical weaknesses of traditional experimental methods. To fill in this important knowledge gap, this study proposed a special approach involving an upgraded Mobile Aerosol Lung Deposition Apparatus (MALDA) that consists of a set of human airway replicas including a head airway, tracheobronchial airways down to the 11th lung generation, and a representative alveolar section. In addition to the comprehensive coverage of human airways, the MALDA is easily transportable for providing efficient estimations of aerosol respiratory deposition. In this study, the MALDA was first evaluated in the laboratory and then applied to estimate the respiratory deposition associated with passive vaping in an indoor real‐life setting. The results showed that the respiratory deposition data aligned closely with the conventional respiratory deposition curves not only in the head‐to‐TB region but also in the alveolar region. The strengths of MALDA demonstrate great promise for a wide variety of applications in real‐life settings that could provide crucial information for future public health and indoor air quality studies.

Estimation of Health Risks Caused by Metals Contained in E-Cigarette Aerosol through Passive Vaping

“…Figure 1 b shows the schematic of MALDA with locations of sampling probes. MALDA and its prototypes have been validated by laboratory aerosol and applied to several environmental and occupational health-related aerosol exposure studies to estimate aerosol respiratory depositions [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. Results obtained from these studies showed that MALDA is a useful tool for efficient on-site aerosol respiratory deposition experiments.…”

“…The MALDA prototype has been applied in several occupational aerosol respiratory deposition experiments, including welding fumes and 3D printing emissions [ 36 , 37 ]. Later, an upgraded MALDA was developed by including the alveolar region and was applied to study e-cigarette aerosol [ 38 , 39 ]. In this study, the upgraded MALDA was further employed to assist in the estimation of health risks caused by passive vaping.…”