Effective density of inhaled environmental and engineered nanoparticles and its impact on the lung deposition and dosimetry

Background Airborne environmental and engineered nanoparticles (NPs) are inhaled and deposited in the respiratory system. The inhaled dose of such NPs and their deposition location in the lung determines their impact on health. When calculating NP deposition using particle inhalation models, a common approach is to use the bulk material density, ρ b , rather than the effective density, ρ eff . This neglects though the porous agglomerate structure of NPs and may result in a significant error of their lung-deposited dose and location. Results Here, the deposition of various environmental NPs (aircraft and diesel black carbon, wood smoke) and engineered NPs (silica, zirconia) in the respiratory system of humans and mice is calculated using the Multiple-Path Particle Dosimetry model accounting for their realistic structure and effective density. This is done by measuring the NP ρ eff which was found to be up to one order of magnitude smaller than ρ b . Accounting for the realistic ρ eff of NPs reduces their deposited mass in the pulmonary region of the respiratory system up to a factor of two in both human and mouse models. Neglecting the ρ eff of NPs does not alter significantly the distribution of the deposited mass fractions in the human or mouse respiratory tract that are obtained by normalizing the mass deposited at the head, tracheobronchial and pulmonary regions by the total deposited mass. Finally, the total deposited mass fraction derived this way is in excellent agreement with those measured in human studies for diesel black carbon. Conclusions The doses of inhaled NPs are overestimated by inhalation particle deposition models when the ρ b is used instead of the real-world effective density which can vary significantly due to the porous agglomerate structure of NPs. So the use of realistic ρ eff , which can be measured as described here, is essential to determine the lung deposition and dosimetry of inhaled NPs and their impact on public health. Graphical abstract