An Inexpensive Monitoring Network to Assess Workplace Aerosol Exposures

描述（由申请人提供）：个人接触采样是确保工作场所的化学和物理危害保持在职业接触限值以下的主要手段。一般来说，测量的照射量很少，代表了大量的工作人口，因为个人采样既昂贵又耗时。因此，大多数关于工人受到保护的程度的决定都是基于极其稀疏的数据。将廉价的传感器分布式网络的整合有可能提供显着的收益，在信息内容可用于了解暴露的可变性，这是至关重要的评估和减轻工作场所的风险的组成部分。中概述的实验室和现场工作 该应用将开发和使用一种新型分布式监测网络，该网络基于新推出的廉价气溶胶传感器，并带有工人跟踪功能，以估计个人暴露情况。随着拟议工作的成功完成，将有许多好处，包括关于廉价传感器和网络可部署监测器的操作和性能的信息（目标1），优化职业环境中监测器数量和位置的方法（目标2），以及整合网络和工人跟踪数据以估计个人暴露的方法（目标3）。这项开发工作产生的新的暴露评估框架将应用于工业工作场所为期两年的实地研究，以证明其一般效用，并评估其在不同情况下的可靠性。对来自现场研究的dta的分析预计将展示如何使用分布式监测网络来评估与急性（例如，15分钟）和慢性暴露（例如，8小时、40小时或更长时间;目标2）。在目标3中进行的进一步分析预计将表明，网络衍生的个人暴露量与传统测量的个人暴露量相比更有利，接近或符合NIOSH的方法等效性标准。与传统的个人采样相比，这些新框架将使暴露测量前所未有地增加（1，000倍至10，000倍）。样本量的急剧增加，即使比常规取样的准确性和精确性稍差，也将使常规工业卫生实践、医疗监测和流行病学研究中的全面接触评估成为可能。此外，该框架足够通用，可以根据传感器的可用性适用于任何物理或化学试剂。因此，这项工作的结果将直接适用于国家职业研究议程（诺拉）的许多部门。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Personal exposure sampling is the primary means to ensure that chemical and physical hazards in the workplace are maintained below occupational exposure limits. Typically few exposures are measured to represent a large working population because personal sampling is expensive and time consuming. Hence, most decisions regarding the extent to which workers are protected are based on extremely sparse data. Incorporation of distributed networks of inexpensive sensors has the potential to provide dramatic gains in the information content available for understanding the components of exposure variability, which are critical to evaluating and mitigating workplace risk. The laboratory and field work outlined in this application will develop and use a novel distributed monitoring network based on newly available, inexpensive aerosol sensors with worker tracking to estimate personal exposures. With successful completion of the proposed work, there will be many benefits, including information on operating and performance of inexpensive sensors and a network- deployable monitor (Aim 1), a method to optimize the number and placement of monitors within an occupational setting (Aim 2), and a method to integrate network and worker tracking data to estimate personal exposures (Aim 3). The new exposure assessment framework emerging from this development work will be applied in two year-long field studies at industrial workplaces to demonstrate its general utility and assess its reliability in diverse situations. Analyses of the dta from field studies is expected to demonstrate how the distributed monitoring network can be used to evaluate hazard risk at different time scales relevant to acute (e.g., 15-min) and chronic exposures (e.g., 8-hr, 40-hr, or longer; Aim 2). Further analyses conducted in Aim 3 are expected to show that network-derived personal exposures compare favorably to conventionally-measured personal exposures, approaching or meeting NIOSH criteria for method equivalence. Compared to conventional personal sampling, these new framework will enable an unprecedented increase in exposure measurements (1,000X to 10,000X). This dramatic increase in sample size, even if somewhat less accurate and precise than conventional sampling, will make comprehensive exposure assessment possible in routine industrial hygiene practice, medical surveillance, and epidemiological study. Moreover, the framework is sufficiently general to apply for any physical or chemical agent depending on sensor availability. Consequently, the results of this work will be directly applicable to many sectors of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA).