In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the International Society of Exposure Science has been including Exposure Science Digests - brief articles that "showcase successes" in the field. The July/August 2010 edition includes digests on:

'Ensuring the safety of chemicals'
http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/v20/n5/full/jes201028a.html

and 'The smoking gun: working to eliminate tobacco smoke exposure'.
http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/v20/n5/full/jes201034a.html

If you have not been able to access the Exposure Science website because you have forgotten your password. There is an easy way to set a new one!

Simply go to the following URL and enter your email address:

http://exposurescience.org/user/password

After clicking on "Email new password", an email will be sent to you that tells you how to gain access to your account and make a new password.

If you are still having problems, please send me an email.

You can use the contact form: http://exposurescience.org/contact

I have written a program for Linux called "SidePak LaBraT" that is able to simultaneously plot and save real-time SidePak aerosol data from multiple SidePak units. It seems currently impossible to connect multiple SidePaks to a single Windows computer, so this software is Linux-only. I've spoken to the folks at TSI and FTDI (makers of the USB/Serial chip) and there seems no way for the Windows drivers to handle multiple SidePaks. But Linux has no problem :-).

"SidePak Buddy" is software for the Linux and Windows platforms that plots and saves real-time aerosol levels measured by a TSI SidePak Aerosol Monitor. This software is meant to be a user-friendly way for both technical and non-technical people to see the immediate impact of a source of particulate matter on air quality.

I have recently used this software to demonstrate the levels of real-time particles that occur in an automobile with an active smoker present (see http://latimes.com/smoking).

This updated version of "SidePak Buddy" (Version 1.2) has the following features:

I've come across two webpages that contain online calculators, one for estimating the natural or mixed-mode ventilation rate of an arbitrary building:

http://phpaida.veetech.org.uk/phpaida.php

And one for estimating the ventilation rate of a building from steady-state CO2 measurements and occupancy level:

http://phpco2.veetech.org.uk/phpco2.php

I've continued work on an MS Windows application to facilitate retrieving and viewing real-time aerosol concentrations from a TSI SidePak monitor. Attached is a ZIP file containing the Windows EXE file, which has been tested on Windows XP, as well as the complete Perl/Tk source code (in a compressed ZIP file). This is a pre-release version and is intended to be tested in a limited group before being released publicly. Please use it, mangle it, and tell me all about it.... Note: I've dubbed this version the "SidePak Buddy" since "tkSidePakGetWin32" was a little cryptic :-).

I finished a simple computer program tested on Windows XP that you can easily use to view and save real-time aerosol concentrations from a USB-connected TSI SidePak aerosol monitor. Simply unzip the attached file and copy the Windows EXE file ("tkSidePakGet.exe") to your desktop or anywhere else on your hard drive.

Double-clicking on the blue SidePak icon will launch a terminal window and a plotting window in which SidePak concentration values will immediately start appearing on a stripchart, 1 every second. The values are also automatically saved in a text file named sidepackoutput.csv (by default). The File menu contains items for starting and stopping the stripchart and for saving the current plot as a PostScript file.

We lost our electricity last night (Nov 10) and proceeded to light many candles throughout the house. 6 in the kitchen, 4 in the living room, and 3-4 in the bedroom area. These were both the large scented candle variety and the tall candlestick variety. This photo shows the time series of aerosol as measured by the Sidepak using a 0.32 calibration factor. As with the hookah (see earlier post) the measured mass emissions seem very high and need to be confirmed by lab calibration experiments.

As a test of the Sidepak in field locations and also to gather some pilot data for hookah emissions, Wayne Ott, Neil Klepeis, and friends visited a hookah lounge on November 8, 2007. This is a plot of the particle concentrations as measured by the SidePak monitor with the calibration factor set at 0.32. Up to 4 or 5 hookahs were active at a time. Note: A hookah is a mid-Eastern water pipe that heats a 25% tobacco/fruit mixture. Attached is the log sheet from the visit.

I have just finished working up a small Perl computer script that can communicate with a SidePak aerosol monitor over a Windows COM port, gathering data in 1-sec intervals. It gathers data every second and writes the returned values to a text file along with a time and date stamp. See the attached files for the script ('SidePakGetWin32.pl') and an example of the output written to a file ('temp.txt').

Just in case you are one of the uninitiated in the wonders of the SidePak :), you can get more info at TSI.