55 research outputs found

    Assessing Inhalation Exposures Associated with Contamination Events in Water Distribution Systems

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    <div><p>When a water distribution system (WDS) is contaminated, short-term inhalation exposures to airborne contaminants could occur as the result of domestic water use. The most important domestic sources of such exposures are likely to be showering and the use of aerosol-producing humidifiers, i.e., ultrasonic and impeller (cool-mist) units. A framework is presented for assessing the potential effects of short-term, system-wide inhalation exposures that could result from such activities during a contamination event. This framework utilizes available statistical models for showering frequency and duration, available exposure models for showering and humidifier use, and experimental results on both aerosol generation and the volatilization of chemicals during showering. New models for the times when showering occurs are developed using time-use data for the United States. Given a lack of similar models for how humidifiers are used, or the information needed to develop them, an analysis of the sensitivity of results to assumptions concerning humidifier use is presented. The framework is applied using network models for three actual WDSs. Simple models are developed for estimating upper bounds on the potential effects of system-wide inhalation exposures associated with showering and humidifier use. From a system-wide, population perspective, showering could result in significant inhalation doses of volatile chemical contaminants, and humidifier use could result in significant inhalation doses of microbial contaminants during a contamination event. From a system-wide perspective, showering is unlikely to be associated with significant doses of microbial contaminants. Given the potential importance of humidifiers as a source of airborne contaminants during a contamination event, an improved understanding of the nature of humidifier use is warranted.</p></div

    Contaminant Mass Balances Obtained with 60- and 1-s Water-quality Time Steps<sup>a</sup>.

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    <p>Contaminant Mass Balances Obtained with 60- and 1-s Water-quality Time Steps<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0168051#t008fn001" target="_blank"><sup>a</sup></a>.</p

    Influence of the fraction of the population using ultrasonic humidifiers on 95th percentile impacts.

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    <p>Results are for Network E1, an injection at 0:00 with a mass equal to 10 kg, and a fill time for all humidifiers of 22:00. Humidifiers are used for eight hours each day. The different lines in the plot provide results for different fractions of the population that use humidifiers.</p

    Influence of the time when humidifiers are filled on 95th percentile impacts.

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    <p>Results are for Network E1 and an injection at 0:00 hours with a mass equal to 10 kg. Ultrasonic humidifiers are assumed to be used for eight hours each day by 20% of the population. Note that this figure should be viewed in color.</p

    Example of bounds on inhalation impacts associated with humidifier use.

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    <p>Results are for aerosols for Network E2 and 10 kg of contaminant injected at 0:00 hours. Twenty per cent of the population is assumed to use ultrasonic humidifiers for eight hours each day, with fill times either at 22:00 hours or uniformly distributed from 06:00 to 23:30 hours.</p

    Global Sensitivity Analysis with Small Sample Sizes: Ordinary Least Squares Approach

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    A new version of global sensitivity analysis is developed in this paper. This new version coupled with tools from statistics, machine learning, and optimization can devise small sample sizes that allow for the accurate ordering of sensitivity coefficients for the first 10–30 most sensitive chemical reactions in complex chemical-kinetic mechanisms, and is particularly useful for studying the chemistry in realistic devices. A key part of the paper is calibration of these small samples. Because these small sample sizes are developed for use in realistic combustion devices, the calibration is done over the ranges of conditions in such devices, with a test case being the operating conditions of a compression ignition engine studied earlier. Compression–ignition engines operate under low-temperature combustion conditions with quite complicated chemistry making this calibration difficult, leading to the possibility of false positives and false negatives in the ordering of the reactions. So an important aspect of the paper is showing how to handle the trade-off between false positives and false negatives using ideas from the multiobjective optimization literature. The combination of the new global sensitivity method and the calibration are sample sizes a factor of approximately 10 times smaller than were available with our previous algorithm

    Impacts associated with inhalation of a volatile contaminant during showering.

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    <p>The upper figure shows 50th to 100th percentile impacts for Network E2. The lower figure compares 95th percentile impacts for the three networks. Ten kilograms of contaminant was injected at 0:00 hours for all three networks.</p

    Maximum impacts from inhalation of volatile and nonvolatile contaminants during showering.

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    <p>Results are for Network E3 from two separate simulations, both using 10-kg injections at 0:00 hours. Nonvolatile contaminants are in aerosols in the shower air.</p

    Weighted histograms of starting times of grooming events reported in ATUS from 2003 to 2012.

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    <p>Results are presented for cases for which one and two events were reported. Results for single events are separated into cases in which events occurred before noon and after noon (top row). For cases with two events, results are presented separately for events occurring before and after noon (middle row) and also for the first and second of the two events (bottom row).</p
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