Reevaluation of the employment of Fick's law for diffusion dosimeters

This paper reconsiders the means of applying Fick's first law to passive diffusion dosimeters. The performance of the organic vapor monitor (OVM), a commercially available dosimeter, is modeled in terms of gradients, which are generated by evaporating a compound from the dosimeter. The fluxes induced by the gradients are determined gravimetrically. The ratio of a flux and a gradient is reported as a Fick's law proportionality constant, the sampling rate. The sampling rate for the gradient across the OVM is calculated from a harmonic average of the sampling rates of two other gradients. The OVM sampling rates for nine compounds determined by the new methodology agree well with published values. Further analysis of the other two gradients provides a value for an apparent reduction in sampling rate in the absence of airflow across the dosimeter (a boundary-layer effect). Procedures are also described to validate measured air concentrations by determining the sampling rates before and after exposure and by correcting for the boundary-layer effect. Sampling rates were found to be stable during 2-4-day exposures in a variety of conditions. In contrast, the boundary-layer effect caused the measured air concentrations to be substantially lower than the estimated true air concentrations.