A New Miniature Respirable Sampler for In-mask Sampling: Part 1-Particle Size Selection Performance

The Health and Safety Laboratory has developed a miniature respirable sampler to gain a better understanding of the exposure of workers to hazardous substances when they are wearing respiratory protective equipment (RPE) or helmets with visors in the workplace. The study was in two parts and the first part, described herein, was to develop the sampler and test its collection characteristics. Assessment of the impact of the sampler on RPE safety and its comparability with traditional laboratory-based approaches to measure protection factors was discussed in a second article. The miniature sampler (weight-5.4g, length-13mm) was designed to fit into the space available between the nose and chin of an individual inside a filtering facepiece type mask and has a radially omnidirectional inlet with a porous foam particle selector that allows the collection of the respirable fraction on a downstream filter. The sampling efficiency was compared with the respirable convention. A close match with the respirable convention was obtained at a flow rate of 1 l min^-1 and the 50% penetration cut off value (d ₅₀) was 4.08 µm. After 3 hours sampling in high humidity (95%), the penetration curve had shifted towards smaller particle sizes (d ₅₀ = 3.81 µm) with 88% of the calculated bias values within 10%. The miniature sampler measured respirable dust and crystalline silica mass concentrations comparable with performance of the Safety In Mines Personal Dust Sampler (SIMPEDS), commonly used in Great Britain, at a flow rate of 0.8 l min^-1 The d ₅₀ for the miniature sampler at 0.8 l min^-1 (4.4 µm) is within 5% of the d ₅₀ of the SIMPEDS at its prescribed flow rate of 2.2 l min^-1 (4.2 µm). These results indicated that the miniature sampler was a good candidate to proceed with tests with RPE described in the second part of this series of two papers.