Personal Breathing Zone Sample

A personal breathing zone sample is an air sample collected from the space near a worker's nose and mouth, using a small pump worn on the body with the filter clipped near the collar. It measures what that worker actually breathed, which is why OSHA uses it to judge compliance with exposure limits.

Origin

Early industrial hygiene surveys mostly sampled the general room air (area samples) with fixed instruments such as the midget impinger. Battery-powered personal pumps came into wide use in the 1960s and 1970s, and OSHA's asbestos standards made personal sampling the basis of compliance monitoring.

Significance in Asbestos Context

An area sample taken across the room can badly understate the exposure of someone cutting, sawing or mixing an asbestos product at arm's length. When old survey data are used to reconstruct a worker's dose, whether each sample was personal or area, how long it ran, and what task was under way all affect how much weight it deserves. Expert reports should say which kind of sample each number came from.

Example Sentence

The area samples in the shop averaged 0.3 f/cc, but personal breathing zone samples on the men sanding joint compound ran above 5 f/cc.

Related Terms

Air Sampling, Industrial Hygiene, Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL), Exposure Reconstruction, Phase Contrast Microscopy (PCM), Midget Impinger

Notes

• If your employer's air test results are produced in your case, ask whether they were personal or area samples and what work was being done.
• A single low result does not describe years of exposure; the tasks and frequency matter.