A model study on the effect of human’s height variability in particle deposition and retained dose in the respiratory tract

The objective of the current study was to investigate the impact of human’s height variability to the deposition percentage, the deposited and the retained dose of particulate matter in the respiratory tract. In addition, the dose to the oesophagus, blood and lymph nodes was evaluated after particle clearance. A methodology which correlates anatomical and physiological parameters with height was adopted into an existing particle dosimetry model (Exposure Dose Model 2, ExDoM2). Model results showed that deposition of particles with aerodynamic diameter (dae) ranging from 0.001 to 10 μm depends on the competition between anatomical/physiological parameters, with the maximum effect induced from height variability to be observed for particles in the size range of 0.30 μm ae 10 in the respiratory tract. Investigating the inter-subject variability of PM10 dose showed that the extrathoracic region was characterized by lower variability (10.0%) compared to the thoracic region (16.2%). After clearance, the highest variability was observed for blood (15.7%), followed by the respiratory tract (12.1%), lymph nodes (10.4%) and oesophagus (10.1%). Results of the current study highlight the impact induced by incorporating height to scale the inter-subject variability in particle deposition and dose in the human body. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024.