Development of eye exposure characteristic chamber for the identification of environmental disease caused by fine particles

초록

An environmental disease is a disease that occurs due to environmental factors such as physical, chemical, and biological factors, and it is recognized that there is a correlation between environmentally harmful factors and disease through epidemiological investigation. Among them, environmental eye diseases are diseases caused by atmospheric environmental factors such as yellow dust and fine particles, and they cause dry eye syndrome and allergic conjunctivitis. Recent studies have shown that the incidence of environmental eye disease tends to increase gradually, but most of the studies are mainly based on statistical analysis using correlation analysis between pollutants and eye diseases. In the case of respiratory diseases, nonclinical studies using animal test chambers as well as statistical analysis have been performed. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of air pollutants on ocular diseases using animal test chambers (OECD Guideline 403/412, EPA OPPTS 870.1300.) to identify the mechanism and biomarker of environmental eye diseases. The conventional ophthalmic toxicity assessment method is an eye dropping method, which is different from actual exposure. To compensate for this, a chamber-based eye disease model is constructed similar to the exposure method. Fine particles (PM10, PM2.5) should be concentrated in the eye and external exposure (respiratory, skin) should be minimized. The restraint equipment restricts the movement of the test animal and exposes only the eye area. The separate test space into clean/dirty zones supply clean air from the clean zone to breathe, and supply air containing fine dust in the dirty zone to shut down the external factors of the test. The uniform flow of the clean/ dirty zone was confirmed by the flow analysis inside the test chamber. Brush type particle generator (ISO 19601) is applied to the generation and supply of fine particles, and a dilution rate of up to 25 times was achieved by mass flow controller (