TOXinTRANSPORT: project about toxicological, chemical and physical characterizations of particles in railway environments
Résumé
When studying the toxicological effects of pollutants, mostly this is
achieved examining their action one at a time whereas in real life, many pollutants
act together in a given period of time. This is well known as the cocktail
effect. In addition, the close interactions between numerous physico-chemical
and toxicological effects are not always scrutinized. In this framework, the TOXinTRANSPORT
project was set up. It aimed at examining in-depth the close relationship
between the physicochemical and toxicological effects and the way the
former impacts the latter. The context was that of railway transport where this
link between physico-chemistry and toxicology was made. Numerous instruments
were used to determine the physico-chemical properties of two environments,
namely an underground platform and a railway rolling stock. This characterization
was made along with toxicological analyzes. The originality of this
project was to resort to a biosampler to collect aerosols prior to toxicological
analysis. This eliminates the tedious step of filter processing, technique usually
used for sampling. The obtained results are presented and discussed.