We used transgenic mice carrying the laI reporter gene to study the mutagenesis potential of asbestos crocidolite. The animals were exposed by nose-ondy inhalation to an aerosol containg 5.75 mg/m3 crocidolite dust for 6 hr/day and 5 consecutive days. After 1, 4, and 12 weeks, we examined four end points: the cytology of bronchoalveolar lavage, the lung load of crocidolite, the hydrophobic DNA adducts, and the mutations in the lacIreporter gene. Twelve weeks after exposure, nearly 10% of the inhaled fibers remained in the lung (227 ± 103 ng/mg lung). There was evidence of a typical inflammatory response consisting of multinudeate macrophages at weeks 4 and 12, whereas immediately after the exposure, we observed numerous polymorphonudear neutrophils. The mutant frequency significatively increased during the fourth week after the exposure: 13.5 x 10-5 in the exposed group versus 6.9 x 10-5 in the control group. The induction factor, defined by the ratio of checked mutants of exposed mice to checke mutants of control mice, was 1.96. The mutation spectrum of control lung DNA and exposed lung DNA was similar, suggesting the possible involvement ofa DNA repair decrease in crocidolite-treated animals. We used the 32p-posdabeling method and did not detect any increase of either 5 mC or bulky adduct in treated mice. This is the first study that demonstrates asbestos mutagenicity in vivo after a nose-only inhalation.

Several samplers (IOM, CIP 10-I v1, ACCU-CAP, and Button) were evaluated at various wood industry companies using the CALTOOL system. The results obtained show that compared to the CALTOOL mouth, which can be considered to be representative of the exposure of a person placed at the same location under the same experimental conditions, the concentrations measured by the IOM, CIP 10-I v1, and ACCU-CAP samplers are not significantly different (respectively, 1.12, 0.94, and 0.80 compared to 1.00), the Button sampler (0.86) being close to the ACCU-CAP sampler. Comparisons of dust concentrations measured using both a closed-face cassette (CFC) and one of the above samplers were also made. In all, 235 sampling pairs (sampler + CFC) taken at six companies provided us with a comparison of concentrations measured using IOM, CIP 10-I v1, ACCU-CAP, and Button samplers with concentrations measured using a CFC. All the studied samplers collected systematically more dust than the CFC (2.0 times more for the IOM sampler, 1.84 times more for the CIP 10-I v1 sampler, 1.68 times more for the ACCU-CAP sampler, and 1.46 times more for the Button sampler). The literature most frequently compares the IOM sampler with the CFC: published results generally show larger differences compared with the CFC than those found during our research. There are several explanations for this difference, one of which involves CFC orientation during sampling. It has been shown that concentrations measured using a CFC are dependent on its orientation. Different CFC positions from one sampling session to another are therefore likely to cause differences during CFC-IOM sampler comparisons.

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It is important that analytical results, produced to demonstrate compliance with exposure limits are comparable, to ensure controls are monitored to similar standards. Correcting a measurement result of respirable alpha-quartz for the percentage of crystalline material in the calibration dust is good analytical practice and significant changes in the values assigned to calibration materials will affect the interpretation of results by an analyst or occupational hygiene professional. The reissue of the certification for the quartz reference material NIST 1878a in 2005 and differences in comparative values obtained by other work created uncertainty about the values of crystallinity assigned to national calibration dusts for alpha-quartz. Members of an International Organization for Standardization working group for silica measurement ISO/TC146/SC2/WG7 collaborated to investigate the comparability of results by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and to reach a consensus. This paper lists the values recommended by the working group for use with XRD analysis. The values for crystallinity obtained for some of the materials (NIST 1878, Min-U-Sil5 and A9950) were 6-7% lower than the original certification or estimates reported in other comparisons. Crystallinity values obtained by XRD gave a good correlation with BET surface area measurements (r2 = 0.91) but not with mean aerodynamic particle size (r2 = 0.31). Subsamples of two of the materials (A9950 Respirable and Quin 1 Respirable) with smaller particle size distribution than their parent material did not show any significant change in their values for crystallinity, suggesting that the area XRD measurement of these materials within the particle size range collected is more dependent on how the quartz is formed geologically or how it is processed for use. A comparison of results from laboratories using the infrared (IR) and KBr disc method showed that this method is more dependent than XRD on differences in the particle size within the respirable size range, whereas the XRD values were more consistent between the different measurement values obtained on each material. It was not possible to assign a value for percentage purity to each material for users of IR analysis. This work suggests that differences are likely to exist between the results from XRD and IR analysis when measuring 'real' workplace samples and highlights the importance of matching the particle size of the calibration material to the particle size of the workplace dust for measurements of crystalline quartz.

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