• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.196-208
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• 1997

This study was performed to estimate quartz contents in the both bulk and airborne dust samples and to determine particle size distribution of airborne dust from the selected foundry operations. Total dust samples were collected by a 37mm cassette and respirable by a 10 mm nylon cyclone. Particle size distributions were determined by a Marple's 8-stage cascade impactor at the melting, molding, shakeout and finishing operations. The presence of elements in the dust samples were confirmed by the scanning electron microscopy equipped with the energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry. The quartz contents were estimated using the intensity of the absorption peak of quartz at 799 cm-l by the Fourie Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). The results were as follows: 1. The analysis of data from cascade Impactor showed bimodal distributions of particle size at the melting, molding and shakeout operations. Mass median aerodynamic diameters for the distributions determined by histogram were $0.48-1.65{\mu}m$ for small and $13.43-19.58{\mu}m$ for large modes. In the dust samples collected at the finishing operations, however, only a large mode of $18.89{\mu}m$ was found. 2. The percentages of total to respirable dust concentration calculated from the impactor data ranged from 42 % to 66 %. The average concentrations of respirable dust by cyclone were $0.85-1.28mg/m^3$ collected from the workers, and were $0.23-0.56mg/m^3$ from the areas surveyed. Dust concentrations of personal samples were statistically significantly higher than those of area samples. The highest dust concentration was obtained from the personal samples of the finishing operation. 3. The mean percentages of silicon and oxygen estimated by SEM-EDXA in the bulk samples ranged from 35.83 % to 36.02 % and from 39.93 %-41.64 %, respectively. 4. The average quartz contents estimated by FTIR in the respirable dust from personal samples ranged from 4.32 % to 5.36 % and 4.54 % to 4.70 % in the bulk samples. No statistical difference of quartz content was found between foundry operations. In this study, quartz content was quantified by FTIR. Although no statistically significant difference in quartz content between airborne and bulk, samples and between different foundry operations was found, it is recommended that quartz content in the individual sample of respirable dust be analyzed and the results be used either to select an applicable quartz limits or to calculate the exposure limit. Further studies, however, are needed to compare the results by FTIR and XRD since it is reported that the quartz content determined by FTIR is different from that by XRD.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.18 no.E4
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• pp.203-213
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• 2002

Receptor modeling is one of statistical methods to achieve reasonable air pollution strategies. In order to maintain and manage ambient air quality, it is necessary to identify sources and to apportion its sources for ambient particulate matters. The main purpose of the study was to survey seasonal trends of inorganic elements in the coarse and fine particles. Second, this study has attempted emission sources qualitatively by a receptor method, the PMF mo-del. After that. both PMF (positive matrix factorization) model and TTFA (target transformation factor analysis) model were applied to compare and to estimate mass contribution of coarse and fine particle sources at the receptor. A total of 138 sets of samples was collected from 1989 to 1996 by a low volume cascade impactor with 9 size fraction stages at Kyung Hee University in Korea. Sixteen chemical species (Si, Ca, Fe, K, Pb, Na, Zn, Mg, Ba, Ni, V, Mn, Cr, Br, Cu. Co) were characterized by XRF. The study result showed that the weighted arithmetic mean of coarse and fine particles were 51.3 and 54.4 $\mu\textrm{g}$/㎥, respectively. Contribution of both particle fractions were esti-mated using TTFA and PMF models. The number of estimated sources was seven according to TTFA model and 8 according to PMF model. Comparison of TTFA and PMF revealed that both methodologies exhibited similar trends in their contribution pattern. However, large differences between contributions were observed in some sour-ces. The results of this study may help to suggest control strategies in local countries where known source profiles do not exist.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.324-333
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• 2006

This study was designed to investigate the effect of bone demineralization and tibia lead on blood lead in retired lead workers. Two hundred thirty five(126 females and 109 males) retired lead workers who worked in 4 different lead factories and 101 non-occupationally lead exposed subjects(51 females and 51 males) were recruited from March 2004 to October 2004. Bone mineral density(BMD) was measured at left calcaneous bone area by broadband ultrasound attenuation(BUA) method with QUS-2(Metra Biosystems Inc, USA). The BUA value transformed into T-score by WHO standard conversion criteria. Tibia bone lead was measured for skeletal bone lead with K-xray fluorescence(K-XRF) and blood lead was analyzed with flameless atomic spectrophotometer. Hemoglobin, hematocrit, serum calcium and iron were also analyzed. In addition, information for smoking and drinking status and basic personal data such as age, gender and lead exposure were also collected using questionnaire inquiry. Blood lead was correlated with tibia lead (r=0.664) and these two variables were negatively correlated with BMD in bivariate analysis. BMD showed significant main effect on the change of blood lead independent to tibia lead without any effect modification of age or gender; the one T-score unit decrease of mineral bone density made $0.43{\mu}g/dl$ increase of blood lead. On the other hand, tibia lead showed effect modification with gender on blood lead; the slope of tibia lead on blood lead in male was steeper than in female and crossed at around zero of tibia lead. In the multiple regression analysis of blood lead and tibia lead on BMD after adjustment of related covariates, only blood lead showed statistically significant effect on BMD. This study confirmed that BMD and blood lead were significantly associated. To verify the causal association of BMD on blood lead and vice versa, further longitudinal studies are needed.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.18 no.5 s.95
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• pp.687-693
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• 2006

The Stone Powder Sludge(below SPS) is the by-product from the process that translates stone power of 8mm under as crushed fine aggregate. It is the sludge as like cake that has average particle size of $7{\mu}m$, absorbing water content of 20 to 60%, and $SiO_2$ content of 60% over. Because of high water content of SPS, it is not only difficult to handle, transport, and recycle, but also makes worse the economical efficiency due to high energy consuming to drying. This study is aim to recycle SPS as it is without drying. Target product is the lightweight foamed concrete that is made from the slurry mixed with pulverized mineral compounds and foams through hydro-thermal reaction of CaO and $SiO_2$. Although in the commercial lightweight foamed concrete CaO source is the cement and $SiO_2$ source is high purity silica powder with $SiO_2$ of 90%, we tried to use the SPS as $SiO_2$ source. From the experiments with factors such as foam addition rate and replacement proportion of SPS, we find that the lightweight foamed concrete with SPS shows the same trends as the density and strength of lightweight foamed concrete increases according to decrease of foam addition rate. But in the same condition, the lightweight foamed concrete with SPS is superior strength and density to that with high purity silica. This trends is distinguished according to increase of replacement proportion of SPS, also the analysis of XRF shows that the hydro thermal reaction translates SPS to tobermorite. Although SPS has low $SiO_2$ contents, the lightweight foamed concrete with SPS has superior strength and density, because it reacts well with CaO due to extremely fine particles. We conclude that it is possible to replace the high purity silica as SPS in the lightweight foamed concrete experimentally.