RJ Lee Group, Inc, 350 Hochberg Road, Monroeville, PA 15146, USA.
Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2018 Dec 15;361:21-26. doi: 10.1016/j.taap.2018.06.018. Epub 2018 Jun 21.
Mineral particles have long been observed in the ambient air and for >40 years, samples of these airborne particulate have been collected in attempt to identify and quantify the amount of asbestos particles in the air. For most of this time, regulated asbestos particles (in the shape of fibers) were the target for these analyses. However, since the turn of the century, more emphasis has been placed on finding and identifying elongate mineral particles (EMPs). For EMPs (particularly serpentine and amphibole minerals), these airborne particles have generally been associated with industrial activities and were reported as "asbestos". Recent monitoring around construction activities involving earth moving have reported concentrations of different mineral particles at sites of varying distance from the activity. The location of detected ambient elongate mineral particles (EMPs) is similar to the locations of soils that also contain EMPs. This close association indicates the necessity for proper mineral identification and valid morphological characterization to allow for source identification. Unfortunately, there continues to be problems with mineral identifications in many studies, regardless of the morphological habit of the particle. This paper addresses the issue of proper mineral identification in ambient air samples.
矿物颗粒在环境空气中一直存在，并且已经有超过 40 年的时间，人们一直在收集这些空气中的悬浮颗粒样本，以试图识别和量化空气中石棉颗粒的含量。在这段时间的大部分时间里，这些分析的目标是受管制的石棉颗粒（呈纤维状）。然而，自本世纪初以来，人们越来越重视寻找和识别长形矿物颗粒（EMPs）。对于 EMPs（特别是蛇纹石和角闪石矿物），这些空气中的颗粒通常与工业活动有关，并被报告为“石棉”。最近在涉及土方工程的建筑活动周围进行的监测报告了不同矿物颗粒在距活动地点不同距离处的浓度。检测到的环境长形矿物颗粒（EMPs）的位置与也含有 EMPs 的土壤的位置相似。这种密切的关联表明，有必要进行适当的矿物识别和有效的形态特征描述，以确定来源。不幸的是，无论颗粒的形态习性如何，许多研究中仍然存在矿物识别的问题。本文讨论了环境空气样本中正确的矿物识别问题。
