Biopersistence of man-made vitreous fibres.

Methods for the determination of biodurability of man-made vitreous fibres are reviewed. For mineral wools the first step was the preparation of respirable fibre fractions. Fibres were administered to rats by inhalation or by intratracheal instillation. After serial sacrifice their lungs were digested by low-temperature ashing or by hypochlorite. The total number of fibres per lung and the distributions of length and diameter were analysed by electron microscopy. This resulted in a bivariate distribution of fibres at the various sacrifice dates. If the logarithm of the number of fibres decreased approximately linearly with time after exposure then the elimination kinetics of fibres can be characterized by a half-time. The half-times were compared between various experiments with rats exposed to mineral wool samples. In summary good agreement was found for the elimination of fibres after long-term inhalation and intratracheal instillation whereas shorter half-times were found after short-term inhalation.