Personal Sample Measurements of Airborne Lead During Abatement Procedures

A Statistical Evaluation of Asbestos Air Concentrations

“…Information regarding associations between area and personal airborne asbestos samples are important for evaluating exposure criteria and determination of the hazard assessment, as well as the underlying distribution [35,38,51,68]. Generally, area samples are employed for environmental and public health protection, evaluation of emission controls (engineering controls) and general concentrations of fibres or other contaminants in the work location, including inside and outside the regulated area (containment area) [2,[35][36][37][87][88][89]. Personal samples also can be used for decision criteria besides that of occupational concerns, including as an evaluator of engineering controls [35,40].…”

“…Airborne concentration data were summarised by measures of central tendency and dispersion [35][36][37]. Confidence intervals (CI), at 95%, were determined for non-transformed data (arithmetic mean, AM) using a technique for non-normally distributed sample populations [71].…”

“…Sample distributions were evaluated using the Shapiro-Wilk W test [35,60,[73][74][75][76] for data that were non-transformed and transformed (natural logarithm) [35][36][37]49]. Percent distributions were calculated using a computer program [77].…”

“…Such information is relevant for planning control measures and selection of personal protective equipment (PPE) for initial abatement operations [35]. Many of these studies provide data on either area (stationary) or personal measurements with a limited Lange number of investigations providing both [35][36][37]. Area samples are often employed to determine the airborne concentration within an area such as work location (inside the containment or regulated area), outside the containment and for evaluation of engineering controls and work practices.…”

“…Sampling data, in the form of an exposure assessment and its resultant hazard assessment, establishes the basis of whether PPE is employed and to what level [35][36][37][38][39][40]. Many specifications have required use of PPE, particularly respirators, without consideration of historical exposure data [1,41,42].…”