In this and the next part, we will look at health impacts

associated with two specific pollutants, aerosol particles

and radon gas. This part is about the particles.

Lets first look at a few examples of the materials we find in aerosol

particles.
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Asbestos is a mineral that shreds into fine fibers instead of
somewhat-spherical particles like other rocks.
The fact that minerals withstand extremely high temperatures
without burning or melting allowed asbestos to be incorporated into
heat insulation materials and stuff that benefitted from the fibrous
structure and heat resistance, such as floor and ceiling tile and brake
linings. The problem occurs when the asbestos-containing material
deteriorates and the asbestos fibers become airborne. The fibers,
when breathed in, become stuck inside the respiratory system and
cause chronic inflammation. The particles become encapsulated by
scar tissue and protein-like coatings. Asbestosis results from the
chronic inflammation; lung cancer, such as mesothelioma, may
result from tumor growth induced by the encapsulation of the
particles or the carcinogenic quality of the asbestos.
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Another material sometimes found in particles is lead. In the old
days before unleaded gasoline, there were measurable amounts of
lead particles in the outdoor air. Nowadays, its mostly indoors from
the erosion of old house paint that used lead-based pigments.
Industrial operations where lead is smelted or melted down can
release lead particles into the air.
Inhalation or ingestion of lead can lead to neurological problems,
mental illness, anemia, and other effects. Actually, not a lot of lead is
inhaled; most of the lead that enters the body is through ingestion,
but the lead may have spent time in the air as particles and settled
out in food-production areas and became incorporated into the
foods.
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There are other toxic and carcinogenic metals that occur in particles,
including chromium, mercury, arsenic, nickel, and so on.

Here is a photomicrograph of asbestos particles on the

right. The fibers are probably less than a micrometer in
width, and up to twenty or thirty micrometers long.
These particles are smaller than a human hair, which may
be a several tens of micrometers in diameter.
The x-ray photograph on the left shows shadows in the
lungs, which are areas of asbestosis.

Other particulates may originate as smoke from

combustion. The visible part of smoke are particulates;
the invisible part consists of various combustion gas
molecules.
One type of particle formation involves the clumping of
gas molecules until they become big enough to scatter
light and become visible. This is known as gas-toparticle conversion, and can occur with pollutant gases in
smog and among the gases in combustion exhaust. These
make up some of the smallest aerosol particles, and the
light they scatter is what makes the air hazy.

Here is some of that haze. Some of the particles in this

haze may be small soil dust particles and some may be
very fine water droplets.

Particulates are very small, perhaps with radii as small as

a few hundredths of a micrometer up to ten or twenty
micrometers. This chart shows, besides the general sizes
of various types of particles, the typical fallspeeds of the
particles. This is the average speed that particles fall
toward the ground due to gravitational force downward
against the aerodynamic friction of air flowing around
the particles as they fall. Generally, the smaller the
particle, the slower it falls and therefore the longer it
stays in the air. This means that we do not find many
particles in the air that are larger than about ten to twenty
micrometers radius, because they fall so fast, they do not
stay in the air for very long. It also means the smallest
particles are potentially the most dangerous, because
they stay around in the atmosphere long enough for
someone to breathe them in.

The reason we have this specific lecture section on

aerosol particles is that studies over the years have
shown that exposure to particulates has a particularly
strong impact on health, especially the fine particles
that are smaller than two to three micrometers diameter.
This plot shows how the mortality rates are fairly linearly
correlated to the concentration of the fine particulates.

This is an example of a news article about studies

showing the correlation of particulate exposure and
health risk. Children are especially susceptible to the
health impacts from all kinds of air pollutants, not just
particles, because small children breathe in more air per
unit bodyweight than adults.

We can classify the health impacts of particles, and other

pollutants for that matter, as follows:
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Toxins are basically poisons, where they have a harmful
effect on physiological functions, like breathing, central
nervous system functions, liver and kidney functions,
etc.
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Carcinogens, however, involve mutations and nondifferentiated growth of tissue in the form of tumors. The
term mutagen may apply here, due to the mutations of
DNA, but not all mutations result in cancerous growth or
a risk of cancerous growth, so we should reserve the term
carcinogen for those.
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A promutagen is something that indirectly causes
mutations, by helping to form other mutagenic agents in
the body. Some promutagens may therefore be
considered a type of carcinogen.

To determine if a substance is a carcinogen, we need to

see if it will increase the risk of tumor growth. Doing this
in a conventional toxicological study takes too long,
since it usually involves the entire lifetime of the subject.
So we need something that has a shorter lifetime or faster
life process, like bacteria. This is relatively inexpensive
as well, since we can analyze thousands of
bacteriophages for mutations.

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The AMES test involves exposure of Salmonella bacteria

to the test mutagen. The initial strain of Salmonella
requires histidine to flourish. After exposure to the
mutagen, the bacteria are cultured on a histidine-poor
medium. Mutated Salmonella lose their need for
histidine and grow while only a few colonies might
survive in the unexposed control group due to a random
mutation. The greater the bacterial growth in the
exposed group, the greater the carcinogenic effect of the
pollutant, assuming the mutation effect leads to increased
cancer risk.
And now, a few questions about particles and health.

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