Mineralogic and Health Risk of Respirable Dust Exposures: Current Progress and Future Challenges
A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Pollution and Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2024 | Viewed by 1818
Special Issue Editors
Interests: particulate air pollution; contamination; human health; geoenvironmental research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: particulate air pollution; human respiratory health; environmental research
Interests: atmospheric environment; environmental geochemistry; mineralogy, geo-health; coal geology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Respirable dust can be defined as mineral grains capable of entering the human lung, and once inside the lung they are capable of causing adverse health effects. These effects can be temporary or permanent damage, leading to a large range of different diseases. Typically, these diseases are either cancer such as mesothelioma from asbestos exposure or non-cancerous such as the fibrotic disease silicosis from respirable crystalline quartz. There is a growing knowledge base about the biotoxicity of different minerals, the sizes and shapes of those mineral grains, and possible health outcomes. Current research is targeting specific minerals, both naturally occurring minerals as well as manufactured mineral materials typically used in the construction industry amongst others. The technology used collect airborne minerals is constantly improving, along with improvements in monitoring networks. Advances are constantly being achieved in assessment of mineral biotoxicity. A clear trend in this research is a movement away from conventional toxicity involving animal models to state-of-the-art techniques using in-vivo models and genomics. Future challenges are likely to include increases in respirable dust exposures as a result of climate change resulting in enhanced dust generation with resulting increases in lung overload and exposure duration.
Dr. Tim Jones
Dr. Kelly BéruBé
Prof. Dr. Longyi Shao
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- mineral dust
- airborne
- respirable
- inhalable
- lung disease
- dust storm
- toxicology
