Chemiluminescence Flow Analysis for Monitoring of Respirable Crystalline Silica

Abstract

Particulate silica is a trace respiratory hazard in a wide variety of industries that employ two million Americans. Workers exposed to high levels of respirable particulate silica may acquire chronic respiratory diseases including silicosis, lung cancer, chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, and kidney disease, potentially resulting in disability, respiratory failure, and premature death. There is a growing need to control compliance costs of meeting newly tightened workplace safety standards designed to protect the health of at-risk workers. This need could be met by an instrument designed to continuously monitor minute quantities of this pollutant on-site to provide real-time results with chemical specificity. Our simplified, compact instrument designs apply a novel combination of advanced aerosol instrumentation and established chemical analyses to accomplish a highly selective and sensitive, continuous measurement of airborne silica. This instrument is envisioned to fill a crucial role in workplaces, providing a complement to existing federal reference method analyses that performed off-site on an infrequent basis and are best suited to demonstrating compliance with federal workplace safety regulations. Its addition is intended to improve efficiency of air quality control measures, reduce operating costs, and reduce worker exposure to this hazardous substance.