THE DETERMINATION OF TREMOLITE ASBESTOS IN TALC POWDER SAMPLES *

1 April 1987

journal article
research article
Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Annals of Occupational Hygiene

Vol. 31 (2) , 219-225
https://doi.org/10.1093/annhyg/31.2.219

Abstract

Transmission electron microscopy was used to study the effect of crushing and grinding on the detection limit of tremolite asbestos in talc powder samples. Mixtures of tremolite asbestos in talc, with 50 and 100% of the particles below 325 mesh (45 μm) in size, were prepared at concentrations of 1 and 0.1%. The numbers of tremolite asbestos fibres present were then enumerated for three different fibre size criteria: (1) length>10μm, width5μm, width5μm, width<0.5μm. Decreasing the average particle size of the mixture was found to reduce the number of fibres detected. Changing the fibre size criteria to (3) caused a larger number of fibres to be counted, but necessitated the use of EDXA in order to eliminate any non-asbestiform cleavage fragments.

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