Knowledge Bank

The purpose of this work is to quantitatively model the chemical composition of breathable dust in Evans Laboratory air as airborne dust has a high correlation to respiratory diseases. To do this, a library of infrared (IR) spectra of 63 dust particles obtained in previous work is averaged into a single powder spectrum and modeled using Mie-Bruggeman theory. Mie theory is used to model the spectra of known, chemically homogeneous particles of the same size as the dust library for common materials in nature such as clays, gypsum, carbonates, quartz and organics which serves as calibrants for the analysis. It was found that 10% of breathable lab dust is hydrocarbon chains, 10% gypsum, 10% carbonates, 30% clay (mostly illite), 20% quartz, and 20% to recently living organic matter.