Achievement

Former Trainee and continuing Ph.D. candidate Brandon Boor (Environmental Engineering) completed an internship at VTT in Finland to study infant inhalation exposure to chemical emissions from crib mattresses. He conducted experiments in both small-scale and full-scale chambers, evaluated the infant breathing zone concentration of chemicals using a thermal manikin, identified phthalates and isocyanates in mattress samples using FTIR, performed material-phase extractions, and began experiments to measure the emission rate of phthalates from crib mattress covers. He worked closely with several chemists at VTT. His work spawned visits to the University of Texas from two Ph.D. students in Europe (from Belgium and Denmark) who have collaborated with Brandon for three months on follow-up research. The results of their collective international collaboration will be disseminated through two journal papers, and conference papers and a workshop at Healthy Buildings 2012 in Australia.