Personal exposure to ultrafine particles inside academic work environments in tropical climate

Exposure dose relationship aids in interpreting the adverse health effects of particulate matter. Present study estimates personal exposure to ultrafine particles at academic work environments located in a coastal city of India. Real time PNC (10 nm to 420 nm) and PSD was measured using TSI Nanoscan SMPS. Particulate dose deposition in different regions of human lung was calculated using MPPD model. The median indoor (computational room and library) and outdoor ultrafine PNC was 2730; 5300 and 3800 particles/cm3 respectively. Both indoor and outdoor PSD showed bimodal distribution. It was noticed that in the absence of significant indoor source, outdoor sources contribute mainly to indoor PNC. The daily inhalation dose obtained for the present study locations (3.65 × 106 and 7.54 × 106 particles) was much lower than that reported in previous literature. It was also noted that respiratory deposited dose was higher for males than females.