Laboratory and field tests of a novel three-stage personal dust sampler for sampling three dust fractions simultaneously

Abstract

This study designed and calibrated a novel three-stage personal dust sampler for sampling inhalable, thoracic, and respirable dust fractions simultaneously. The sampler has an annular inlet as the first stage for inhalable dust sampling, two impactors in the second and third stages to classify thoracic and respirable dusts, respectively, and a final filter. Laboratory calibration tests using monodisperse liquid and solid particles showed that with 100 ppi (pores per inch) PUF (porous polyurethane foam) substrates and at the flow rate of 3.2 L/min, the sampling efficiency curves of both impactor stages matched with the ISO/CEN/ACGIH thoracic and respirable sampling criteria, respectively. The sampler also agreed with the inhalable criterion for particles smaller than 17 mu m while the deviation increases with increasing particle diameter with a maximum of 28% for 27 mu m particles. It was also found that collection efficiency curve for solid particles was similar to that of liquid particles, indicating that there was no solid particle bounce from the PUF substrates for both impactors. This study also compared inhalable, thoracic, and respirable dust concentrations measured by the present three-stage personal dust samplers with those of the Respicon samplers at three different workplaces. Without using a correction factor of 1.5 for the extrathoracic dusts of the Respicon, field results showed that the present three-stage sampler measured three dust fractions comparable to those of the Respicon samplers. The inhalable dust concentrations of the two samplers differed within 5% while the thoracic and respirable concentration differed by less than 22%.