Hygroscopic growth of consumer spray products

Abstract

The hygroscopic growth of particles produced from 12 consumer spray products was studied to provide the quantitative basis for modeling their respiratory deposition. A tandem differential mobility analyzer (TDMA) was used for the measurement of growth of aerosol particles produced by spray from three disinfectants, four deodorants, four air fresheners, and a cooking medium. The soluble fractions of the aerosol particles were measured for each product and from the growth theory, the molecular weights of the products were estimated. The size distributions of the spray product aerosols were also measured using a low-pressure impactor. It was observed that some of the spray product aerosol do not grow at all, while others showed moderate to high growth. The growth ratio ranged from 1 to nearly 4 depending on the nature of the product and the initial size of the aerosol. The soluble fractions and molecular weights were in the range 0.04–0.96 and 15–700, respectively. The mass median aerodynamic diameters of the aerosols varied from 2.3 to 8.8 μm and geometric standard deviations from 2.0 to 3.8. © 1995 American Association for Aerosol Research Published by Elsevier Science Inc.