Can the inhalation exposure of a specific worker in a cross-ventilated factory be evaluated by time- and spatial-averaged contaminant concentration?
Can the inhalation exposure of a specific worker in a cross-ventilated factory be evaluated by time- and spatial-averaged contaminant concentration?
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.envpol.2019.06.056
复制
发表时间：
2019-09
影响因子：
8.9
通讯作者：
Alicia Murga;Kazuki Kuga;S. Yoo;Kazuhide Ito
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alicia Murga;Kazuki Kuga;S. Yoo;Kazuhide Ito
工业意味着经济增长;然而，工业活动所产生的室外和室内空气污染对环境和人类构成了一个普遍的问题。在人类健康方面，室内空气质量评估在人们大部分时间都呆在室内的社会中变得至关重要，就像工业工人一样。由于室内空气质量受到室外环境的强烈影响，特别是在自然通风条件下（例如，交叉通风），需要进行包括室外大气-城市环境的综合分析，以再现现实场景。在这方面，计算流体动力学（CFD）是一个有用的工具。为了对工厂工人吸入暴露于工作环境中的潜在气相污染物进行精确分析（即，污染物的吸入剂量和潜在影响），人体和呼吸道需要整合在分析中。因此，在这项研究中，我们进行了综合职业吸入暴露/毒理学评估的厂房，应用计算机模拟人（CSP），虚拟人呼吸道和综合生理为基础的毒代动力学（PBTK）模型来预测组织剂量分布。通过风压系数的逐时变化将室外气流变化传递到封闭空间内，计算08：00 ~ 17：00 h的瞬态通风量和室内污染物浓度。此后，在人体鼻孔处计算的时间平均污染物浓度被用于虚拟呼吸道内的气流和污染物分布的稳态计算。随后，我们预测吸附的污染物在人体气道的第一层组织中;最高吸附发生在鼻腔中。最后，基于使用CFD-CSP-PBTK模型进行的综合耦合数值分析的结果，我们定量地讨论了吸入暴露浓度与工厂空间中代表性污染物浓度之间的差异（例如，时间和体积平均浓度）。
Industry implies economic growth; however, outdoor and indoor air pollution generated by industrial activities represents a widespread problem for the environment and human beings. In terms of human health, indoor air quality assessment has become essential in a society where people spend most of their time in indoor dwellings, as in the case of industry workers. Because indoor air quality is strongly affected by the outdoor environment, especially under natural ventilation conditions (e.g., cross-ventilation), a comprehensive analysis that includes outdoor atmospheric-urban environment is needed to reproduce realistic scenarios. In this context, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a useful tool. To perform a precise analysis of the inhalation exposure of factory workers to potential gas-phase contaminants in the working environment (i.e., inhaled dose of contaminants and potential effects), the human body and respiratory tract need to be integrated in the analysis. Therefore, in this study, we performed an integrated occupational inhalation exposure/toxicology assessment in a factory building that applies a computer simulated person (CSP), a virtual human respiratory tract and integrated physiologically-based toxicokinetic (PBTK) model to predict tissue dosimetry distribution. Outdoor airflow variation was transported into the enclosure through an hourly change in wind pressure coefficient to calculate transient ventilation rate and indoor contaminant concentration between 08:00 and 17:00 h. Thereafter, the time-averaged contaminant concentration calculated at the nares of the human body was employed in a steady state calculation of airflow and contaminant distribution inside the virtual respiratory tract. Subsequently, we predicted adsorbed contaminant in the first layer of tissue of the human airways; highest adsorption took place in the nasal cavity. Finally, based on the results of the comprehensive coupled numerical analysis performed using the CFD-CSP-PBTK model, we quantitatively discussed differences between the inhalation exposure concentration and representative contaminant concentration in the factory space (e.g., time and volume-averaged concentration).