A case study on occupational exposure assessment and characterization of particles in a printing shop in China

摘要

Printers can release numerous particles to contaminate indoor environments and pose health risks.Clarifying the exposure level and physicochem-ical properties of printer-emitted particles(PEPs)will help to evaluate the health risks of printer operator.In our study,the particles concentration in the printing shop was monitored in real time for a long time(12 h/day,total 6 days),and the PEPs were collected to characterize their physicochemical properties includ-ing shape,size and compositions.The result showed that the concentration of PEPs is closely related to the printing workload and the highest particle mass concentration of PM_(10) and PM_(2.5) was 212.73 μg m~(-3)and 91.48 μg m~(-3),respectively.The concentration of PM_1 in the printing shop was in the range of 11.88-80.59 μg m~(-3) for mass value,and 174.83-1348.84 P cm~(-3) for count value which changed with the print-ing volume.The particle sizes of PEPs were less than 900 nm,47.99％of PEPs was less than 200 nm,and 14.21％of the particles were at the nanoscale.PEPs contained 68.92％organic carbon(OC),5.31％elemental carbon(EC),3.17％metal elements,and 22.60％other inorganic additives,which contained more OC and metal elements than toners.Total poly-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs)levels were 18.95 ng/mg in toner and 120.70 ng/mg in PEPs.The carcinogenic risk of PAHs in PEPs was 1.40× 10~(-7).These findings suggested future studies should pay more attention to the health effects of printing work-ers exposed to nanoparticles.