The deposition of asbestos particles in the human respiratory tract

Abstract

The deposition of asbestos particles in the human respiratory tract was studied theoretically by treating them as ellipsoids of revolution, in a modified version of the method previously used by the author to study the deposition of spherical particles. The results show that as the eccentricity of the ellipsoids is increased at constant equatorial diameter, deposition is reduced in the diffusion‐controlled particle‐size region below about 0.2 μ. In the particle‐size region where sedimentation and impaction are the controlling mechanisms, an increase in the eccentricity of the ellipsoidal particle at constant equatorial diameter is equivalent to an appropriate increase in particle density, and the deposition curves are displaced to the left.