Overview
The WVU HSC Inhalation Facility is designed to generate artificial atmospheres of inhalable toxicants under tightly controlled conditions for pulmonary exposures in experimental animal models. These exposures replicate environmental and occupational inhalation exposures in humans. The facility performs whole-body and nose-only inhalation exposures to: nanomaterials, military burn pit emissions, gases, field collections from mountain top mining, fracking or heavy vehicular traffic areas,
combustion emissions, 3-D printing emissions, and e-cigarette/vaping. Real-time aerosol monitoring provides high resolution characterization of generated aerosols. Animals can be chronically instrumented for telemetry and drug delivery. Pulmonary function can be measured non-invasively in conscious animals.
Equipment
- Agilent 7000D Quadrupole MS/MS
- TSI Condensation Particle Counter
- TSI Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer
- Vapor Spray Inhalation Exposure System
- Inhalation Exposure System
- McKinney Acoustical Generator
- Dekati High Resolution ELPI+
- TSI Nano-MOUDI-II Impactor
- SCIREQ inExpose System
- Agilent 8890 Gas Chromatography System
- DSI Implantable Telemetry System
- DSI Whole-Body Plethysmography
- McKinney Burn Pit Simulator
- SCIREQ inExpose System
- ABB Advance Optima Gas Analyzer
- Safeware MiniRAE 3000
- Mettler XPR2 Microbalance
- TSI Aerodynamic Particle Sizer
Contacts
Director
Tim Nurkiewicz, PhD | tnurkiewicz@hsc.wvu.edu | (304) 293-7328
Acknowledgements
Please remember to acknowledge support for the Inhalation Facility in all your publications:
Inhalation exposures were performed in the West Virginia University Inhalation Facility which has been supported by the WVU HSC Office of Research and Graduate Education and NIH grants P20GM103434 and U54GM104942.
