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Occupational Exposure to Carbon Nanotubes and Nanofibers

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the thermal-optical instrument was available inonly one labora<strong>to</strong>ry. After additional labora<strong>to</strong>riesacquired thermal-optical instruments, a roundrobin comparison [Birch 1998] was conducted.Matched sets of filter samples containing differenttypes of complex carbonaceous aerosols were distributed<strong>to</strong> 11 labora<strong>to</strong>ries. Six of the eleven analyzedthe samples according <strong>to</strong> NIOSH 5040, whilefive used purely thermal (i.e., no char correction)methods. Good interlabora<strong>to</strong>ry agreement was obtainedamong the six labora<strong>to</strong>ries that used NIOSH5040. In the analysis of samples containing DPM,the variability (RSD) for the EC results rangedfrom 6% <strong>to</strong> 9%. Only low EC fractions were foundin wood <strong>and</strong> cigarette smoke. Thus, these materialspose minimal interference in the analysis of EC. Inaddition, only minor amounts of EC were found intwo OC st<strong>and</strong>ards that char: about 1% for sucrose<strong>and</strong> 0.1% for the disodium salt of ethylene diaminetetraaceticacid (EDTA). Two aqueous solutionsof OC st<strong>and</strong>ards were included in the comparisonas a check on the validity of the char correction <strong>and</strong>accuracy of the TC results. Variability (RSD) of theTC results for the two st<strong>and</strong>ard solutions <strong>and</strong> fivefilter samples ranged from 3% <strong>to</strong> 6%.A second interlabora<strong>to</strong>ry comparison study usingNIOSH 5040 was also conducted [Schauer et al.2003]. Seven environmental aerosol samples wereanalyzed in duplicate by eight labora<strong>to</strong>ries. Foursamples were collected in U.S. cities, <strong>and</strong> three werecollected in Asia. Interlabora<strong>to</strong>ry variability for theEC results ranged from 6% <strong>to</strong> 21% for six sampleshaving EC loadings from 0.7 <strong>to</strong> 8.4 µg/cm 2 . Four ofthe six had low EC loadings (0.7 µg/cm 2 <strong>to</strong> 1.4 µg/cm 2 ). The variability for the OC results ranged from4% <strong>to</strong> 13% (OC loadings ranged from about 1 <strong>to</strong>25 µg/cm 2 ). Results for TC were not reported, butthe variability reported for the OC results shouldbe representative of that for TC, because the sampleswere mostly OC (75% <strong>to</strong> 92%). Similar findingswere also reported by Chai et al. [2012] fromseven labora<strong>to</strong>ries in which analysis was performedusing Method 5040 on four sample filter sets containingOC <strong>and</strong> EC. The summary RSDs for EC resultswere

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