Acute exposure of humans to ozone impairs small airway function

Our approach has been to use noninvasive, regional analysis techniques and we have separated central from peripheral mucus membrane responses to ozone (Foster et al., 1987) and characterised the effects of ozone on regional ventilation and particle dosimetry for the lung periphery (Foster et al., 1993). In these prior studies we relied upon techniques that utilised radioisotopic markers to assess O3-induced changes in regional lung function. The goal of the present study was to expand upon the earlier results using nonradioisotopic methods and multibreath washout of a resident lung gas (N2) to measure nonhomogeneous lung function following exposure to O3.