Seungkoo Kang1, Huayan Liang1, Yong Qian2, Chaolong Qi This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.1 1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Division of Field Studies and Engineering, Cincinnati, OH 45226, USA
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Health Effects Laboratory Division, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA
Received:
July 6, 2020
Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.
Revised:
August 24, 2020
Accepted:
September 24, 2020
Download Citation:
||https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2020.07.0377
Kang, S., Liang, H., Qian, Y., Qi, C. (2021). The Composition of Emissions from Sanding Corian® with Different Sandpapers. Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 21, 200377. https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2020.07.0377
Cite this article:
Laboratory tests were conducted to characterize the composition of emissions from sanding Corian®, a solid-surface composite material mainly composed of alumina trihydrate (ATH) and acrylic polymer. Three sandpaper materials (ceramic, silicon carbide, and aluminum oxide) were tested to distinguish the contribution of aluminum-containing dust in the emission from Corian® and sandpaper itself. The result can help identify the main cause of the pulmonary fibrosis from exposure to aluminum-containing dust while sanding Corian®. Airborne dust samples were measured using direct-reading instruments and collected using a Micro-Orifice Uniform Deposit Impactor (MOUDI) for estimating the normalized dust generation rate. The size-classified dust samples from MOUDI were analyzed for elemental aluminum content. Additionally, air samples were analyzed for characterizing methyl methacrylate (MMA). The results from the direct-reading instruments reveal that the size distribution of particulate from sanding Corian® differs from that of sawing Corian®, showing that the size distribution of dust is affected by the fabrication process. The normalized respirable dust generation rate indicates that more respirable dust was generated during sanding Corian® board. However, the use of aluminum oxide sandpaper does not result in a higher aluminum content in the respirable dust from sanding Corian®, suggesting that the aluminum content of the respirable dust is primarily originated from Corian® itself. The generation rates of MMA from sanding did not vary much among all types of sandpapers, and they were much lower than that of sawing, likely due to the higher temperature in the sawing process.HIGHLIGHTS
ABSTRACT
Keywords:
Solid-surface composite, Respirable dust, Alumina trihydrate, Sanding