Design and performance of a system to control concentrations of common gaseous air pollutants within environmental laboratories used for human exposure studies

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Abstract
One area of responsibility of the USA-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to determine the effects of air pollution exposure on human health. To generate carefully controlled pollutant exposure conditions and to determine their effects on the human body, EPA has established a Controlled Environmental Laboratory (CEL) where all exposure, stress and body function parameters are carefully controlled and documented. The design and performance of the pollutant gas control system for the CEL was described. This system allowed human test subjects to be exposed to constant or varying concentrations (equivalent to ambient levels) of SO2, NO, CO, NO2 and O3. The pollutant gas control system used closed loop feedback control to obtain a control error of < .+-. 5% or twice the lower detection limit of the analyzer, whichever was greater. Status of all critical system components was constantly monitored and stored on magnetic tape to ensure subject safety and to provide for offline data validation.

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