Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Soical Accident Insurance, Alte Heerstraße, Sankt Augustin, Germany.
Ann Work Expo Health. 2020 Apr 30;64(4):430-444. doi: 10.1093/annweh/wxaa016.
In the sector of occupational safety and health only a limited amount of studies are concerned with the conversion of inhalable to respirable dust. This conversion is of high importance for retrospective evaluations of exposure levels or of occupational diseases. For this reason a possibility to convert inhalable into respirable dust is discussed in this study. To determine conversion functions from inhalable to respirable dust fractions, 15 120 parallel measurements in the exposure database MEGA (maintained at the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance) are investigated by regression analysis. For this purpose, the whole data set is split into the influencing factors working activity and material. Inhalable dust is the most important predictor variable and shows an adjusted coefficient of determination of 0.585 (R2 adjusted to sample size). Further improvement of the model is gained, when the data set is split into six working activities and three material groups (e.g. high temperature processing, adj. R2 = 0.668). The combination of these two variables leads to a group of data concerned with high temperature processing with metal, which gives rise to a better description than the whole data set (adj. R2 = 0.706). Although it is not possible to refine these groups further systematically, seven improved groups are formed by trial and error, with adj. R2 between 0.733 and 0.835: soldering, casting (metalworking), welding, high temperature cutting, blasting, chiseling/embossing, and wire drawing. The conversion functions for the seven groups are appropriate candidates for data reconstruction and retrospective exposure assessment. However, this is restricted to a careful analysis of the working conditions. All conversion functions are power functions with exponents between 0.454 and 0.946. Thus, the present data do not support the assumption that respirable and inhalable dust are linearly correlated in general.
在职业安全与健康领域，只有有限的研究涉及可吸入粉尘到呼吸性粉尘的转化。这种转化对于暴露水平或职业疾病的回顾性评估非常重要。出于这个原因，本研究探讨了将可吸入粉尘转化为呼吸性粉尘的可能性。为了确定从可吸入粉尘到呼吸性粉尘分数的转换函数，通过回归分析研究了暴露数据库 MEGA（由德国社会保险职业安全与健康研究所维护）中 15 个 120 个平行测量值。为此，将整个数据集分为工作活动和材料两个影响因素。可吸入粉尘是最重要的预测变量，其调整后的决定系数为 0.585（调整后的 R2 与样本量相关）。当数据集分为六个工作活动和三个材料组（例如高温加工、adj.R2=0.668）时，模型得到了进一步的改进。将这两个变量组合在一起，可以得到一个与高温加工金属有关的数据组，其描述效果优于整个数据集（adj.R2=0.706）。虽然不可能进一步系统地细化这些组，但通过反复试验形成了七个改进组，其 adj.R2 在 0.733 到 0.835 之间：焊接、铸造（金属加工）、焊接、高温切割、喷砂、凿刻/压花和拉丝。这七个组的转换函数是数据重构和回顾性暴露评估的合适候选者。然而，这仅限于对工作条件进行仔细分析。所有转换函数都是幂函数，指数在 0.454 到 0.946 之间。因此，目前的数据不支持可吸入性粉尘和呼吸性粉尘一般呈线性相关的假设。
