Modern man is being confronted with an ever-increasing inventory of potentially toxic airborne substances. Exposures to these atmospheric contaminants occur in residential and commercial settings, as well as in the workplace. In order to study the toxicity of such materials, a special technology relating to inhalation exposure systems has evolved. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descr...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a group of 209 persistent organic pollutants, whose documented carcinogenic, neurological, and respiratory toxicities are expansive and growing. However, PCB inhalation exposure assessments have been lacking for North American ambient conditions and lower-chlorinated congeners. We assessed congener-specific inhalation and dietary exposure for 78 adolescent c...

Automatic monitoring of the concentration of test gases and other environmental variables in small animal inhalation exposure chambers, coupled with computing capability and feedback control of the concentration of test gas, allows almost fully automatic operation of the chambers with a minimal amount of human intervention. Time-varying exposure profiles may be generated repeatedly with great a...

A rule-of-thumb methodology is presented to assist in assessing risk to a nursing child due to the mother's occupational inhalation exposure. The method represents an example of the use of physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling using state-of-the-art computational techniques. A computer model is developed to describe distribution of non-metabolized, inhaled contaminants into a mother/ch...

An inhalation exposure chamber, referred to as the Small Animal Inhalation Rig (SAIR) has been designed to expose test subjects to inhalation aerosols whilst minimising the amount of compound used. This inhalation chamber may be employed for acute inhalation studies with dry powder aerosols involving mice, rats or guinea pigs. This rig consists of two main parts; a fluidised bed aerosol generat...

In this chapter, the concept of exposure assessment and its evolution is introduced, and evaluated by critically appraising the pertinent literature as it applies to exposures to Particulate Matter (PM). Exposure measurement or estimation methodologies and models are reviewed. Three exposure/measurement methodologies are assessed. Estimation methods focus on source evaluation and attribution, s...

Occupational exposure limits have traditionally focused on preventing morbidity and mortality arising from inhalation exposures to individual chemical stressors in the workplace. While central to occupational risk assessment, occupational exposure limits have limited application as a refined disease prevention tool because they do not account for all of the complexities of the work and non-occu...

Assessments of inhalation exposure to environmental agents necessitate quantitative estimates of pulmonary ventilation rates. Estimating a range of exposures in a given population requires an understanding of the variability of ventilation rates in the population. Distributions of ventilation rates (Ve) were described based on the results of a large study where Ve were measured while subjects p...

Stoffenmanager Nano (version 1.0) is a risk-banding tool developed for employers and employees to prioritize health risks occurring as a result of exposure to manufactured nano objects (MNOs) for a broad range of worker scenarios and to assist implementation of control measures to reduce exposure levels. In order to prioritize the health risks, the Stoffenmanager Nano combines the available haz...

BACKGROUND Indoor air concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in some buildings are one or more orders of magnitude higher than background levels. In response to this, efforts have been made to assess the potential health risk posed by inhaled PCBs. These efforts are hindered by uncertainties related to the characterization and assessment of source, exposure, and exposure-response. ...