SAMPLING ENVIRONMENTS CONTAINING ORGANIC DUST

Assessment of airborne organic dust in different environments is neces sary to better understand the relationship between exposure and diseas e. Exposure assessment requires a well-defined sampling strategy which addresses the following questions: Where, how long, who, how many, an d when? For assessing exposure to organic dust, the question of ''what ?'' must be included because, in most cases, the specific toxins or ap propriate surrogates for exposure have not been identified. For most e nvironments with organic dust, these questions have not been adequatel y addressed. However, a large database exists for cotton dust. Cotton is used as a model of organic dust to illustrate the application of ex posure assessment: 1) to develop a dose-response relationship between aerosolized dust and specific health effects; 2) to evaluate the effec ts of process change on gravimetric dust levels and for compliance wit h the cotton dust standard; and 3) to identify specific biologically a ctive components in the dust. (C) 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.