Research Projects

A transportable inhalation exposure facility that provides concentrated coarse, fine and ultrafine ambient particulate matter for studies in experimental animal models has been developed, constructed, and validated during the course of this five year research program. The facility can be configured to collect large quantities of size-selected particulate matter for compositional analysis of particles and for in vitro toxicology experiments. A similar concentrator system suitable for human exposure to coarse, fine and ultrafine ambient particles was also developed and validated. The concentrator systems were applied to investigations of hypotheses concerning the public health impacts of exposure to particulate matter, including field studies of mice and rats exposed to size selected particulate matter in locations around the Los Angeles Basin, such as near-source sites at freeways. A series of clinical studies on human volunteers has been initiated using the transportable concentrator systems, and extensive characterization studies of the chemical, physical and toxicological properties of ambient particulate matter were carried out on samples of particles that were collected for in vitro studies.