Annals of Occupational Hygiene Advance Access originally published online on September 23, 2006
Annals of Occupational Hygiene 2006 50(8):813-819; doi:10.1093/annhyg/mel055
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Collection, Validation and Generation of Bitumen Fumes for Inhalation Studies in RatsPart 3: Regeneration of Bitumen Fumes, Inhalation Setup, Validation
Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology und Experimental Medicine, Nikolai-Fuchs-Strasse 1 30625 Hannover, Germany
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +49 511 5350 116; fax: +49 511 5350 155; e-mail: pohlmann{at}item.fhg.de
Undertaking a chronic inhalation study on bitumen fume presents a challenge in terms of generating sufficient amounts of representative fume. The objective of the study described in this and in previous publications was to collect sufficient fume and use this to develop a laboratory-generated exposure atmosphere, for use in chronic inhalation toxicity studies in rats that resembles, as closely as possible, personal exposures seen in workers during road paving operation. To achieve this goal, atmospheric workplace samples were collected at road paving work sites and compared with bitumen fume condensate samples collected from the headspace of hot bitumen storage tanks. In Parts 1 and 2, we described the collection and analysis of workplace samples, the strategy for in-line extraction of a suitable fraction of bitumen fume collected from the headspace of a bitumen storage tank and the comparison of the collected condensate to the workplace samples. This paper (part 3) describes the regeneration of bitumen fume for inhalation and the exposure setup used for inhalation studies.
Keywords: asphalt bitumen chemical analysis fume polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons workplace