Crawling infants are exposed to more particles than adults - baby robot measures children’s breathing air

The air that crawling infants inhale contains up to ten times more particles than the air that adults breathe in the same room. This is because crawling infants create a localized cloud of particles resuspended from floor dust - some particles stay close to the floor and do not rise high enough for adults to breathe in.

These results were reported in a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology to which the researchers of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare contributed.

Baby robot crawls and resuspends dust from rugs

The study used a custom-built robot that imitates an infant crawling on the floor in a standardized motion, and that measures particles and microbes resuspended from rugs into the air that children breathe.

Since many studies have shown that floor dust is rich in microbes and other biological material, and also can contain potentially harmful chemicals, these biological and chemical compounds are carried into the air with the dust particles being resuspended from the flooring material. Some of these particles move more easily and further with air flows than others, depending on the size and aerodynamic properties of the particles. As a result, the mixture of particles around a child moving around on the rug and thus also in the air they breathe is different from the mixture on the rug surface or in the air that adults would breathe in the same room.

Researchers assume that the amount of dust that gets resuspended from the rug into the breathing air of an infant close to floor level depends on the type and composition of the dust, the amount of dust in the rug and the type and age of the rug.

Both the harmful and beneficial health effects of exposure need to be studied

As part of the project, researchers developed a new exposure index that predicts the likelihood of a dust particle to be resuspended from the floor and entering the infant breathing zone.

"It is important to study how infants are exposed to chemicals and microbes from floor dust so that we can better understand the adverse and beneficial health effects of exposure via children's airways, such as the risk of developing asthma. In the future, we may be able to modify or design indoor environments in ways that better support health,” says Chief Researcher Martin Täubel from the National Institute for Health and Welfare.

This research on infants’ exposure was led by Professor Brandon Boor from the Purdue University, the United States. The work on the project carried out at THL was financially supported by the Academy of Finland (PROBIOM project), the Juho Vainio Foundation and the Kuopio Region Respiratory Association.

Reference

Wu, T., Fu, M., Valkonen, M., Täubel, M., Xu, Y., & Boor, B. E. (2021) Particle Resuspension Dynamics in the Infant Near-Floor Microenvironment. Environmental Science & Technology 55(3); 1864–1875 

More information

Infant and Adult Inhalation Exposure Research (YouTube)

Martin Täubel
Chief Researcher
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
tel. +358 29 524 6466
[email protected]