Common practice in personal air sampling is to attach the sampler to the collar or lapel. Little research has been done to support this location as a valid. For this study, tracer gas concentrations were measured on a half-sized mannequin holding a source in its hands at waist height while standing in a wind tunnel (see below). Samplers were placed at the mannequin's nose, in front of the ear, and at three locations across the chest at lapel level. Simultaneous 15 minute time-weighted average samples were taken by drawing air into different sampling bags with sampling pumps (see Experimental Setup in 54K file). Test conditions included velocities of 10, 22, 47, and 80 fpm, mannequin orientations of face to, side to, and back to cross-draft, and rotating through an 80o arc (fast, slow, and no movement).

The levels at all sampling locations when the mannequin faced to the front and side were far less than a tenth of the levels measured at the nose when the mannequin faced downstream. The interaction of crossdraft velocity and orientation significantly affected levels of concentration.

For 34 out of 36 samples the mean chest concentrations was higher than the nose concentrations (geometric mean three times higher).

The comparison between ear and nose concentrations varied, depending on orientation. At the back orientation, ear concentrations were lower than nose concentrations, while ear concentrations were higher than nose at the side and face to flow orientations. At the crucial back orientation, the chest sampler provided somewhat lower over-estimates of the nose concentration at the higher velocities than at the lower values. Movement of the mannequin, done only at the back orientation, proved important only for the ear location.

The results of this study did not support the validity of the lapel or ear sample locations.