Evaluation of a prototype inhalable sampler

Abstract

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I thank my advisor, Renée Anthony, for her guidance, voice of assurance and for allowing me to work on this project. When I entered her office over a year ago, she asked me what I wanted to gain from my thesis research and I told her that I wanted experience performing personal sampling. Through this project, I have fulfilled my goal and witnessed a side of manufacturing that many people do not see. This research has allowed me to build lasting relationships and gain a vast amount of technical skill. Thank you for being supportive of me in many ways, including funding, and for encouraging and equipping me with the skills I will need to succeed outside of this program. I am grateful for having Dr. Peters and Dr. O'Shaughnessy not only as professors, but also as my committee members. I thank them for their collaboration, critique and more importantly, for their patience as I encountered multiple timeline setbacks during the formation of this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude for this program, which brought together an intelligent and vibrant group of people that I will always get to call my friends. Without these friends and my calico cat, I do not believe I would be where I am today. I cannot express how truly grateful and blessed I am to have such supportive, amazing friends.Lastly, and most importantly, thank you to my family. I have wonderful grandparents who spent their 61 st anniversary road tripping from Virginia to see me in Iowa. I will forever be thankful for my mom's continual support provided throughout this phase of my life, even from over 900 miles away and at all times of day. Thank you for allowing me to spread my wings.iii ABSTRACT Occupational exposure limits are generally decreasing and traditional samplers used for quantifying occupational exposures have numerous limitations: cost, disposability, detection of low concentrations, and some even fail to match international inhalable sampling conventions.A low cost, high-flow (10 L min -1 ) inhalable prototype sampler was developed from the 37-mm cassette and tested in previous studies. These studies called for additional field testing as an area and personal sampler. The sampler was paired with the IOM (2 L min -1 ), a traditional inhalable air sampler, and deployed in metal working facilities. The samplers were compared to determine whether the prototype matched the IOM and whether the new sampler could improve the sensitivity for detecting lower concentrations of metals. The following processes were sampled: welding, grinding, soldering, pouring, sawing, tending and shooting guns. A total of 21 out of 28 paired samples had detectable metals out of 15 possible metals. There were seven out of eight personal samples and 14 out of 20 area samples with detectable metal concentrations. The average sample time was seven hours, but ranged from 4.2 -8.3 hours. The most common metals that were detected on 10 or more samples were iron, manganese, zinc, copper, and lead. Metal concentrations collected by the two samplers...