Passive Badge Assessment for Long-term, Low-level Air Monitoring on Submarines: Chamber Validation

Abstract

Exposure chambers were designed and engineered for validating passive diffusion badges for long-term atmospheric monitoring onboard U.S. Navy nuclear submarines. This a validation study of the reproducibility among five identical chambers. Long-term sampling was evaluated for a 21-day period by comparing the response of a passive badge to an active tube sampling method while they were simultaneously exposed to homogeneous test vapors. The results provided by the five exposure chambers were compared to establish a reproducible correlation among them. Reproducibility among both active sampling tubes and passive badges was demonstrated. The badges continued to accumulate the analyte for the entire 21-day sampling period. Accumulation of the analyte onto tubes was consistently about 40% higher than accumulation onto badges. The average relative standard deviation of tubes was 5.7%. The average relative standard deviation of badges was 7.0%. Average RSDs less then 10% indicate that the chambers can be used interchangeably and can provide equivalent, reproducible results. The chambers are recommended for future use in analyte-specific, passive badge validation testing.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 31, 2005
Accession Number
ADA440152

Entities

People

  • David A Kidwell
  • Kimberly P. Williams
  • Susan L. Rose-Pehrsson

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Atmospheres
  • Chemical Kinetics
  • Chemical Synthesis
  • Chemistry
  • Chlorides
  • Data Analysis
  • Experimental Design
  • Flow
  • Flow Rate
  • Formaldehyde
  • Mass Flow
  • Materials
  • Measurement
  • Molecular Sieves
  • Nuclear Powered Submarines
  • Standards
  • Submarines

Readers

  • Aerospace Test and Evaluation
  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Mathematics or Statistics