Exhaled breath aerosol (EBA): the simplest non-invasive medium for public health and occupational exposure biomonitoring
Citation:
Pleil, J., A. Wallace, AND M. Madden. Exhaled breath aerosol (EBA): the simplest non-invasive medium for public health and occupational exposure biomonitoring. Journal of Breath Research. Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol, Uk, 12(2):027110, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
Exhaled breath collection has long been recognized as requiring the least invasive methods, and so is preferred for environmental and public health studies. In contrast to blood and urine, breath sampling does not require trained medical personnel or privacy, does not create potentially infectious wastes, and can be done on any time frame. In the medical/clinical communities, blood and urine are still considered the gold-‐standard, however, breath analysis is coming into favor for monitoring health state of compromised patients on ventilators, monitoring anesthesia during operations, and for tracking asthma status in children where more invasive techniques are impractical.
Description:
Blood, breath and urine represent the three primary diagnostic fluids for assessing environmental exposures and human health state. Although there is overlap in biological media choice for many applications, each have their individual strategic and analytical advantages: Blood is representative of the overall human exposome and metabolism in that it contacts all living cells in the body; breath represents the gas exchange between the blood and the ambient air as well as pulmonary function, and urine represents the elimination of wastes from environment and metabolic processes. As such, given a specific diagnostic need, the first step is generally to choose the most appropriate sampling approach. Often, this choice is not only driven by the chemistry, but also by the practical aspects of sample collection.
