Technologies for laboratory generation of dust from geological materials

Dusts generated in the laboratory from soils and sediments are used to evaluate the emission intensities, composition, and environmental and health impacts of mineral aerosols. Laboratory dust generation is also utilized in other disciplines including process control and occupational hygiene in manufacturing, inhalation toxicology, environmental health and epidemiology, and pharmaceutics. Many widely available and/or easily obtainable laboratory or commercial appliances can be used to generate mineral aerosols, and several distinct classes of dust generators (fluidization devices, dustfall chambers, rotating drums/tubes) are used for geological particulate studies. Dozens of different devices designed to create dust from soils and sediments under controlled laboratory conditions are documented and described in this paper. When choosing a specific instrument, investigators must consider some important caveats: different classes of dust generators characterize different properties (complete collection of a small puff of aerosol versus sampling of a representative portion of a large aerosol cloud) and physical processes (resuspension of deposited dust versus in situ production of dust). The quantity “dustiness” has been used in industrial and environmental health research; though it has been quantified in different ways by different investigators, it should also be applicable to studies of geological aerosol production. Using standardized dust-production devices and definitions of dustiness will improve comparisons between laboratories and instruments: lessons learned from other disciplines can be used to improve laboratory research on the generation of atmospheric dusts from geological sources.