Research Reports

Dr. Frampton and his colleagues evaluated the effects of exposing healthy and mildly asthmatic men and women to laboratory-generated ultrafine carbon particles. They hypothesized that ultrafine particle exposure would activate leukocytes and endothelial cells and lead to an inflammatory response in the airway and in the blood; and that it also might affect respiration and cardiac electrophysiologic function. They further hypothesized that effects would be greater in people with asthma than in healthy people.

Dr James Ultman and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University recruited 32 men and 28 women to examine differences in ozone uptake in the lung. The subjects (all non smokers) first took a series of single breaths of air–ozone mixtures, which allowed the investigators to examine how ozone was distributed in the airways and where the major fraction of ozone was taken up. In a follow-up test, the subjects pedaled a bicycle ergometer to produce conditions of moderate exercise for one hour while breathing clean air, followed by a third test while breathing ozone at 0.25 ppm).

Dr. Beverly Cohen and her colleagues at New York University School of Medicine tested the performance of iron nanofilms to collect and measure sulfuric acid particles of different sizes under a variety of temperature and humidity conditions. The iron nanofilm detector is a thin iron-coated silicon chip. Particles would react with the iron, creating an elevated site or bump on the film surface, which can be visualized using an atomic force microscope.

In Part III of the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS), Dr. Daniels and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University evaluated the shape of the relation between PM₁₀ concentrations measured at fixed monitoring sites and daily mortality among residents from all causes (excluding accidental causes), from all cardiovascular and respiratory causes combined, and from causes other than cardiovascular-respiratory disease.