Dustiness testing of engineered nanomaterials

We investigated the dustiness (the propensity of a material to generate airborne dust during its handling) of various nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes and metal oxides, by the vortex shaker method. The number concentrations and size distributions (~10->10 000 nm) of aerosol particles released during agitation were measured. It was found that the modal diameter was greater than 100 nm for all tested nanomaterials, and for most of them some sub-100 nm particles were observed. The dustiness differed by two (or three) orders of magnitude among the test nanomaterials.