Colard Stéphane, O'Connell Grant, Verron Thomas, Cahours Xavier, Pritchard John D
Imperial Tobacco Limited, Winterstoke Road, Bristol BS3 2LL, UK.
SEITA, Imperial Tobacco Group, 48 rue Danton, 45404 Fleury-les-Aubrais, France.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2014 Dec 24;12(1):282-99. doi: 10.3390/ijerph120100282.
There has been rapid growth in the use of electronic cigarettes ("vaping") in Europe, North America and elsewhere. With such increased prevalence, there is currently a debate on whether the aerosol exhaled following the use of e-cigarettes has implications for the quality of air breathed by bystanders. Conducting chemical analysis of the indoor environment can be costly and resource intensive, limiting the number of studies which can be conducted. However, this can be modelled reasonably accurately based on empirical emissions data and using some basic assumptions. Here, we present a simplified model, based on physical principles, which considers aerosol propagation, dilution and extraction to determine the potential contribution of a single puff from an e-cigarette to indoor air. From this, it was then possible to simulate the cumulative effect of vaping over time. The model was applied to a virtual, but plausible, scenario considering an e-cigarette user and a non-user working in the same office space. The model was also used to reproduce published experimental studies and showed good agreement with the published values of indoor air nicotine concentration. With some additional refinements, such an approach may be a cost-effective and rapid way of assessing the potential exposure of bystanders to exhaled e-cigarette aerosol constituents.
在欧洲、北美及其他地区，电子烟（“吸电子烟”）的使用量迅速增长。随着其普及率的提高，目前对于使用电子烟后呼出的气溶胶是否会影响旁观者呼吸的空气质量存在争议。对室内环境进行化学分析成本高昂且资源消耗大，限制了能够开展的研究数量。然而，基于经验排放数据并运用一些基本假设，可以对其进行相当准确的建模。在此，我们提出一个基于物理原理的简化模型，该模型考虑气溶胶的传播、稀释和排出，以确定电子烟单次抽吸对室内空气的潜在影响。据此，进而能够模拟随着时间推移吸电子烟的累积效应。该模型应用于一个虚拟但合理的场景，即一名电子烟使用者和一名非使用者在同一办公空间工作。该模型还用于重现已发表的实验研究，并且与已发表的室内空气尼古丁浓度值显示出良好的一致性。经过一些额外的优化，这样一种方法可能是评估旁观者接触呼出的电子烟气溶胶成分潜在暴露情况的一种经济高效且快速的方式。
