Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

There are accumulating evidence that air pollution leads to adverse human health effects even death. In ambient air, ultrafine particles are particularly harmful. Ultrafine particles are particles with diameters of ~1 nm to 100 nm. The primary man-made sources of ultrafine particles are fuel combustion and formation of secondary particles via chemical reactions of gaseous pollutants. Because of their large surface areas, ultrafine particles are often coated with metals, free radicals, and other harmful chemicals. Due to their small sizes, they penetrate to the lower parts of the lung causing respiratory disease including allergy, asthma, and lung cancer. Ultrafine particles are not regulatory yet; ambient monitoring of ultrafine particles is sparse due to high cost of instrumentation; and control methods are costly due to their small sizes. However, there are urgent needs of research in the areas of ambient monitoring, exposure assessments, health effects studies, and emissions controls. A Fast Mobility Particle Sizer Spectrometer (FMPS, TSI Model 3091) is being sought by faculty members in the Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Dr. Xu and Dr. Tam), and the Dept of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering (Dr. Ting and Dr. Zheng), University of Windsor to support active research programs of formation and dispersion of ultrafine atmospheric particles. The fund being requested will enable the purchase of stand-alone, field deployable equipment capable of measuring the ultrafine particles as small as 6 nm in ambient air or combustion exhaust to support those programs.